Sinoed

New blog

2009-12-13T12:32:00.002+08:00

Since Blogspot is blocked in the Mainland, there is a new blog I opened: laoserge.livejournal.com

Preying on the mantis

2008-09-24T19:19:00.008+08:00

A praying mantis visited our modest abode the other day. In my kung fu practice I naturally have heard about the praying mantis as a style, and even did some taolu of the abovementioned style, but never in my life had I seen a representative of the species in the immediate proximity. And this hour has come. (gong-g-g-g-g)

The critter was huge at close-up. About 5 inches long, flying around the room like a noisy locust. An amazing sight. My wife says they are nothing special, pretty obvious inhabitants of these areas, and that if you squash their bellies, a stinky gooey goo comes out and it's better not to squash them. Like I would think about it.

The visitor flew around the room for a while, perched on the roof of a wardrobe observing the interior, and made a beeline to the water dispenser. I just looked on, giving in to those momentary flashes of fantasies that it could be my half-tamed house pet, living behind the water bottle and from time to tome giving me an insight into some tricky martial arts movements. I didn’t even come closer to have a better look, building up that invisible bond at a distance.

The climax came deep in the night. I was exiting the kitchen with a glass of water in my hand when I noticed our visitor against the whiteness of the wall. The mantis sat in its full greenness on top of the tipped water bottle, rocking slowly and graciously from side to side. Ever so slowly it raised one of its front legs and put it on the wall, its body still wafting, then its other front limb let go of the surface of the bottle and the mantis stood up on those other many legs that were left, performing exactly that stance that makes this kung fu style stand out form amongst all the others. You know, that praying mantis position, with the palms like hooks, sitting low on the hind leg, the other lightly touching the ground in front of you, rocking gently like a charged spring? That one. I was spellbound and looked it in what I think were the eyes. My head started bobbing up and down to the rhythm of the insect’s movements. I felt like a recluse somewhere in a bamboo grove of the Wu Dang mountains, standing on all fours and drinking in the movements of the praying mantis on a moss-covered path, wanting it to teach me all its moves, wanting to create an invincible style of fight, repeating all the stances.

My wife came by and in the silence of the night started sharing the moment. I love the way she smiles sometimes at me, understandingly, her head a little atilt, an eyebrow raised daintily. She shared the moment a little longer and asked: “Whatever are you doing?”

I felt like saying “May I keep it?”, but the man in me translated this message into a more virile “What will we do with it?”

Turned out it was better if we got rid of it and sent it flying from the balcony into the freedom of the night. Lisa kept looking at me and I started to feel she was expecting something. I looked right back at her with innocent eyes of a Green Peace activist. She raised the other eyebrow, shook her head, sighed out my name and took a napkin. As her fearless hand was nearing the mantis, in a swift move the warrior insect flew up and hung a semi-circle around me. The maneuver worthy of a great fighter. An instant later, as I was turning my head to see where it landed, something shattered my peaceful reality jerking me out of the bamboo grove. A sneaky hand from the outside treacherously crashed the tender walls of the idyllic word and grabbed my leg with its hairy tentacles. I momentarily looked down, saw the mantis who must have erroneously took me for an enemy and, in a jiffy assessing the situation, valiantly shook my leg, gave out a brave yawl meant to scare the adversary, and jumping back into a more advantageous position, caught the glass of water in mid-air, masterfully managing to save the whole half of it. The mistaken mantis landed on the floor not far away from me.

My wife was looking at me in an astonished way, and this time both her eyebrows were showing unreserved awe. She wanted to ask me something along the lines of 'Serge, how could you...', but the doughty mantis was hopping away towards the shoe rack, and the question about my bravery went unfinished. My wife performed the catching of the mantis in an ok way, as far as her female aptness allowed her; but again, it’s hard not to give in to a human in an unequal fight unless you are a cartoon.

The mantis flew on its way from the balcony to be eaten by a female of its species. Or, possibly, to eat a male. And my wife, returning from the balcony, happily laughed, looking at me, this time her eyebrows at a normal level, now that under my directions a worthy but possibly misled combatant was launched into the night.
________
* photo of a real mantis by stormahawk

World through a pinhole

2008-09-24T13:02:00.004+08:00

You know, I am short-sighted. Ophthalmologically speaking. My eyes started to lose the grasp in the 4th grade. Back then I was too shy to wear them eye-crutches (somehow the silly juvenile gregariousness told me to stay away from the dangers of being called four-eyes), so the myopia progressed and when in high school I finally dared to put the glasses onto my nose and look the world in the face, beautiful images with multiple details revealed themselves to me, enthralling me and shattering the almost established (fuzzy) picture of the world, sharpening the edges and adding delicate and fine pieces to the now miraculously finished jigsaw puzzle of the universe. Ah, that’s how it’s supposed to be, now...

Since then (and reluctantly back before that) I tried to find the cure. My mom made me do exercises that bored me witless, I read brochures of laser clinics, and I slowed my gait at the windows of the stores selling those glasses with holes drilled in their black plastic lenses. For some reason for about 10 years that those glasses were in the market I only wanted to try them out, but never actually got around to buying them.

But now life hung a twist and, like greatness to some folks, thrust a pair of pin-hole eyeglasses into my greedy sweaty hands. Now, I was not looking for easy ways, and I laughed at the opportunity to fidget with such specs in a drug store in a country where I presently was located. Being in China, I chose to mail-order them from abroad – a certain respect to special-ordered goods, plus I didn’t have to make up my mind and drag my feet anywhere – everything was managed right from the couch in my living room.

I ordered the device from www.pinhole-glasses-direct.com. The package arrived to China from Italy very quickly, but I could lay my hands on it only a couple of months later as I had been traveling in Russia. The parcel covered the way from Italy to Beijing and then via my friend to Zhuhai. I always liked things made in Italy. I had a frame by Giorgio Armani, and I liked it tremendously, so it was an additional incentive to don the shades.

That’s how the pinhole glasses look on the snout of a bottle at 20:55.
The amazing but simple theory behind the use of pinhole glasses can be found here and here.

The world through pinholes is a little different and may be not unlike what a dragonfly may see with all those cells or what has it – at least the effect is such that every object comes through the hole at a slightly different angle and as I move my head each object acquires that je ne sais quoi kaleidoscopic quality overlapping with another image of itself.

Something like this.
I have not used these glasses for a long time yet, but I can say that they make the eyes work a little, sharpening the world a bit (as compared to the de-spectacled variant of the latter). The good thing is that the exercises are being done without much conscientious effort, and it’s of course not a bad thing at all.

My better half showed a lot of excitement and wears those glasses just for the fun of it several times a day, looking at the new image of world, at the same time – hopefully – improving her eyesight. Thus far, the pinhole glasses showed themselves from only the positive side, and if it is not only my imagination, they produce a tangible effect.

That is apart from the heartwarming fact that, as it turns out, Eskimos were the first to use the philosophy behind pinholes, wearing wooden specs with narrow slits to escape the glare form the immaculately white snow (for which they have several dozen names), and you cannot beat Eskimos to that. Because even though I don't know much about the Eskimos, they seem like really cool and wise folks; take for example their maxim 'do not eat yellow snow' and there you have it, knowing they won't use what's not good for you.

Time out of joint?

2008-08-11T03:15:00.004+08:00

We are in Russia, watching the Olympics on TV, many people are amazed somebody could leave China to watch the Chinese Olympics via the tube, but just thinking about the throngs and the security measures taken, I just shudder and shift into a more comfortable position on the couch.

The opening was overrated - just good work of engineers and PR specialists. On the other hand though these games for the Chinese people are not what it may seem to the rest of the world. The hopes of national pride are pretty high, actually hard to grasp...

Just to let know of a friendly site about Beijing Olympics -http://www.2008chinaolympics.com

On a sadder note, it is really weird to see the Olympics on one channel, and the next button shows what's happening in South Ossetia. A mockery of human beliefs in peaceful games, and a terrible display of political trickery.

I talked to some people in Georgia over ICQ, and heard inside Georgia rumors are that Ossetia and Russia attacked Georgian peacekeepers first, and then they just answered. Media coverage is a pretty strong device.

Yeah, Georgia is a pretty small country and may seem as a victim of a cruel barbarian Russia, but so far the facts (I know) are that Georgia made the first attack, and knowing the possible implications, for sure would never have done that had it not been backed up by a more powerful ally.

But now it is not about that. The world as I have known it somehow warped up and tumbled down. On the international scale there are Olympic games, and on the same international scale there are political discussions over Ossetia and this mix really seems to be out of joint.

Hope the Olympic Games will see the beginning of the peace process.

Mangoes for Wisdom

2008-06-07T18:03:00.005+08:00

As the need arose to send tropical mangoes to chillier climates, here they are, hanging over sidewalks, tempting people, absorbing the nutritious sap from the week-long endless downpours, under the low leaden clouds which are pressing the sultry air close to the ground. They huddle together to the accompaniment of sky-splitting peals of thunder, and get illuminated from time to time by either lightings or camera flashes. The rain season in all its swelteringly soggy beauty. And this year it is especially unbelievably refreshing.

May also serve as the illustration for this.

The gears of time are slowly churning

2008-04-15T12:45:00.003+08:00

I wouldn't want to even say that it was only yesterday that I watched Friends.

It wasn't yesterday and it doesn't even feel that way.

Quite a few things have happened between me watching Friends and now.

But it sure as life on Earth feels like I did it only the day before yesterday and not a minute further.

I am the same me, I got the same old habits and mores, and I can just turn and see Joey freaking out because he was about to turn 30, and in this respect I didn't think much of it, the usual flow of events, even September of 2001 blended into this flow, because it was just a fact of life, and life is ours...

But yesterday I just faced the fact that Jennifer Aniston is 40 next year, and lo and behold, a decade swooshed by, and it is not that nothing much was accomplished, it is just that the time does go on, and even though I thought that the moving on and in and out of times is quite a malleable matter, actually the transparent wall that grows in the wake of you breezing through life is transmogrifying into this concrete-like consistency, like a thick glass against which we press our faces and flatten noses, warming the wall and pretending that it is all still here, just push the hand through the ever jelling past...

Not that I mourn the times gone by, I just guess it is an incentive to drink in the moment as it is flowing through you (and you through it) at this very second, this very day. Nothing new, but what is? After all, a revelation is such only in relation to the one who receives the afflatus, not whether it was known to somebody else, huh?

Been in Guangzhou today, we have

2008-04-04T22:48:00.002+08:00

We've been in Guangzhou today - and still warm form the oven of my memories - here are the details of our trip.

Right after you get off the bus, Guangzhou subway sends you a message hinting at the necessity not to overstay the welcome. Probably a necessary precaution with the overpopulation and stuff.

I am not sure what happened at this Bank of China branch office, but the sign hangs over the doors advertising lingerie (which naturally lead to the stores selling lingerie), and there is no sign of the teller windows or neatly dressed bankers or what else have you in your ordinary decent bank. I guess it is more profitable nowadays to deal in bras than in brass (yes, I agree, this pun sucks, but it seemed like a funny choice under the circumstances).

A moon-lighting store... I guess it's their day job though... so it's gotta be a moon shining store then.

I had to get my camera out and take a shot of this sweet but stern notice.

And in the spirit of internationalism, the speakers of Russian will sure appreciate this little gem of a linguistic wonder.

Pinguo Lost in Be!j!ng

2008-03-31T21:56:00.005+08:00

Just watched the movie L0st in Be!j!ng ('Pinguo' in Chinese domestic distribution, which means 'Apple', at the same time being the name of the main character), and boy, did them times in massage parlors come back in Technicolor and even in the tactile memories of the texture of those armchairs, and passing acquaintance with Laobans (bosses) of some massage places, and philosophic debates with friends about the very existence of such.

The lives of the characters in that movie spin out of control and just lead me to think how eddy currents of sin suck one in, with just a finger touching the outskirts of the vortex. Don't know about the others, or even the director's vision of the message, but that's what surfaced in my mind. The Shakespearean dramas weaving through the reality reveal a lot, giving birth to the despondency of such situations, especially here in China, and it is hard to grasp the precise descriptive attributes that relate to the sorry 'heroes', but the movie might be an eye-opener. Sadly, for many who are already on the inside of the vortex. Oh well, this longing to un-weave this scarring yarn.

Besides artistic values of the flick (including the jarred editing of the scenes - broken shots from a single position without much combing), the value of the movie might be in that it calls up lots of allusions and is totally not bad. And that it is about China.

Chinese Drive-In

2008-03-29T22:13:00.005+08:00

Taking a stroll around campus tonight I was intrigued by the sounds of what seemed to be a movie trailing off into the humid emptiness between the balding mountains surrounding our school. I approached a square and indeed saw a large screen stretched between two poles and a projector on a school desk shimmering away with a Hong Kong gangster flick. Scattered in front of the screen, against the backdrop of the languorously dark and voluptuously wet subtropical night, were the silhouettes of riders on the bikes, casting amorphic shadows in the flickering light of that makeshift drive-in Chinese way. The teenaged students jauntily straddling a-bike reminded vaguely of the long-gone images of the US drive-ins, eating take-away food and sharing comments; some girls were stretching their barely clad - for the weather - legs near their iron wheeled horses, who in turn kept their peace and did not even give out a neigh as they usually do in that unoiled metallic screeching voice of theirs when the riders are not paying attention.

It's a nice ending of a Saturday night - with a head massage at the barber's on campus, calm half an hour by the lake to the sound of the fish splashing around in the shallow waters, and a walk back home in anticipation of an easy movie with a bottle of Chinese Tsingdao beer and pistachios. Strangely, not very often that I've been noticing those little pleasant moments lately.

Chinese brands red hot for the Russian market

2008-03-10T23:09:00.004+08:00

Russian inside

Осторожно, ненормативные... ассоциации.

Если не играет, попробуйте здесь или тут.

Wedding Chinese Way

2008-03-05T00:15:00.002+08:00

An excellent wedding party of one of my colleagues - a beautiful event, nice people, an interesting look into the fusion of traditions. It was a great evening, and since not everybody has a chance to experience such wonderful and special cultural gatherings, here is a short video I made.

If the video doesn't open from this page - try here.

Happy Chinese New Year

2008-02-07T06:46:00.000+08:00

The Year of the Shu

My gift-video:

If my gift-video doesn't seem to play in your browser, your work-place or your country, try watching it here

Stranded in Guangzhou

2008-02-03T02:43:00.000+08:00

Many people asked me if I was ok with the snowstorms and a million of people stuck at the Guangzhou train station:
Well, first off, there is no snow here in the south of Guangdong, but due to snow up north, the trains are not running (the winter has taken the transportation system by surprise, global warming playing tricks, no less). So all the migrant workers who flocked to the well-developed province, as usual this time of the year have to go back home and reunite with the families, - the yearly exodus has started. As they say it is the time when half of China take off and leave for the other end of the country while the rest of the people on the other hand take off and leave for the opposite end. I am sorry for the children who have to endure all this trial of the character, but again, it is a whole lotta tempering for the rugrats, they'll grow to be strong little citizens.To add insult to injury, the weather turned, well, wintry, and for the lack of habit of warming buildings inside down here in the south, those folks are in for a really hard time - the weather is brightening their stay with 45 degrees F (7C), strong wind and that incessant pesky rain. I am freezing my @$$ inside of the house, and it gives me the creeps to just think of the situation at the GZ station.
But we are staying home, trying that slow family housekeeping life for a change (my times of obligatory rough traveling - especially during the Chinese New Year - most fun! - seem to wane).
Mobile phone service providers send off messages warning people that the train station in Guangzhou stopped selling tickets until all who are waiting there take their trains and clear the premises.

But people are people, and the internet is full of topical humor.

Knowing the love of the Chinese towards gambling, this joke wandering around instant messengers (read: QQ) is kinda funny:

To alleviate the situation at the Guangzhou railway station the authorities ordered 20,000 packs of playing cards and 10,000 mahjong sets distributed among the stranded aspiring passengers. Now the situation has cooled down and the people are now reluctant to leave when their trains are ready to board since they got everything they need right here.

He was a #10

2008-01-22T21:13:00.001+08:00

Heck of a name for a soccer player.

"Hey, I scored one. Oops, own goal. Lemme turn my back t'y'all"

Preserving the moment

2008-01-21T02:36:00.000+08:00

Today we were (actually still are) making strawberry preserves. The recipe was carefully memorized from the time we visited with my mom last summer, and finally strawberries ripened up in our neighborhood (mid-January is about the right time for that). We first kept the strawberries sprinkled with sugar for 6 hours (so that them red berries give out the juice) and just the look of it made me want to keep that image as a little memorabilia for the times when the taste buds will have forgotten the lingering flavor of the actual thing.

And - here is the yummy result:

Another reason to be proud

2008-01-19T00:15:00.001+08:00

The source of pride is running dry? - the answer lies in the Orient.
Try resorting to the chopsticks.

Just remember the basic precautions:

To call a spade...

2008-01-14T15:09:00.001+08:00

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-25T15:39:00.000+08:00

Quite a nice site. Witty inscriptions dat autha wrotes.

Economic implications of ophthalmology and Ho Art from Zhuhai

2007-12-24T12:02:00.001+08:00

I often get this thing when I am switching over to new spectacles, - the world suddenly acquires a certain unexpected twist – things seem smaller, the perspective shrinks, and when I attempt to pick up a cup I'm only grabbing the air near the actual thingy. On the other hand, my shoes begin to look frightfully large - perhaps because the earth now seems to be closer due to the shriveled reality, bringing my huge paws right under my nose. Good old things I used to take for granted are no longer the same.

But, amusingly, this seems to work with economy as well. For example, today we went to that Japanese supermarket, Jusco, and all the things I was used to, have contracted - amazing what new specs could do to you! The 5.50 bread became smaller, though the price tag stayed the same. The way pizza slices look also kinda shrunk, though check this out - the weird thing is that the size contraction is somehow selective - earlier when I bought two slices of pizza they used to stick out of the individual package box like two happy overflowing symbols of cornucopia, held in place by the plastic wrap, daring me to eat them while they were still hot and throbbing with baked cheese, and it warmed my heart to just hold so much tasty food. But today - who could have believed! - the pieces snugly fitted into that plastic container, nothing bulging over the edges, and the packages no longer sang the silent song of plenty - my question is then, did they start using larger containers, since the price stayed the same?!

And hey, what's up with the frozen salmon? - a hearty chunk of the tasty fish flesh used to cost about 20 yuan, and now smaller-looking sorry pieces go for 30. Oh the danger of changing your specs...

At the end I will enlighten your holiday spirit with the picture of a store here in Zhuhai. It's either the first jingle of Santa is coming to town, or one of the two.

Subliminal ads

2007-12-11T20:32:00.001+08:00

This subliminal message is sent out to the unsuspecting public in one of Zhuhai malls.
No photoshop, no nothing, just the live shot. Holiday decorations covered a part of the ad. But still, they hit the bullseye.
In the meantime I am in continuous battle trying to go against their subconscious command...

Who's dat man?

2007-12-09T10:07:00.001+08:00

The thing left to determine is whether you will be as joyful as that saliva-splashing star with crazed eyes after sipping your drink from the cup one used.

Caved kids

2007-12-02T18:39:00.000+08:00

Something amazing and thought-provoking came to my attention via a great Russian-language blog about China called 马-Gazeta. The English story may be seen at the Reuters page.

It's a story about a little school in a Miao village, somewhere in China's Guizhou province. I should say that I came in touch with the Miao people on Hainan island, and apart from the cool sounding name for this nationality, I began to entertain a certain attachment to the Miao's fair ... let's say 'gender' to avoid a possible pun, and as a dabbling polyglot learned a few phrases in Miao (which have happily fallen into oblivion for the absence of practical usage)...

But it's not the story - here I'll tell y'all a thing that could make recurrent bitching about how much the stuff we have doesn't work right or doesn't satisfy or breaks at the wrong time seem like overreacting and actually abusing those gifts which life has given us to have but for some time, something which I myself tend to forget pretty often. On the second thought in the same idea-basket falls the guess that all those cool possessions and gadgets are not what should be making us truly happy. Well, same old actually, nothing new under this sun.

Anyhow - long story short - here is the Dongzhong school.

It is located under the soaring dome inside a huge hangar-size cave, which houses all the amenities and teaching facilities. All I am saying I am sure those kids are simply happy to be going to any school or throw the ball into a makeshift hoop, but here I sit letting the thought that I don't have a faster computer or a better phone make me not enjoy the things I have right now. I am sure those little people are amazed at the magic of a TV show in a kind of a different way than myself in the solitude of my apartment on a couch.

After re-reading my post (more a note to self) it's not even a juvenile claim to go change the world, but rather of a reminder not to be so attention stingy towards the gifts which are already falling out of the handfuls.

Evil smoke

2007-12-01T23:04:00.000+08:00

Wait, shouldn't this thing happen only in the down under?

OR...

Is that actually admitting that cigarette smoke is so heavy it is going down the instant it leaves the heated end of the tobacco stick?

Male toil

2007-11-30T22:49:00.000+08:00

And the ladies are what, letting their hair down?

Oh, no, hard work awaits both genders.

I don't know what they are doing there,
but sounds pretty menacing.

... Might be it is just a suggestion to mind your manners and keep the bird from flipping though.

Almost there

2007-11-29T18:09:00.000+08:00

Not too long ago the guys at Sinocidal ran a caption contest for an amusing picture:

Well, quite suprisingly I realized that our heros were not taking it easy and by now the situation improved - they are half way there!

Clothes and destination changed a trifle, but the perseverance of the train-jamming folks is sure to get them there.

Borrowed from here. Thx Alex.

UPD. Seems like this way of taking care of ladies is a pretty popular gentlemen's pastime. I couldn't refrain from putting all three of those photos in the same post to establish this sort of a parallel.

Another menu

2007-11-23T00:22:00.001+08:00

Knowledge of Russian is necessary (yet another reason to learn foreign languages):
Machine translation continues to make us happy with its priceless semantic findings.
There is more at the original site.

It's like meeting the fresh fruit, romantically

2007-11-20T23:11:00.000+08:00

Where I have been today.

A very nice pizza place here in Zhuhai. Nothing bad about the place - the food was tasty, the waitresses attentive and relatively pretty, the menu well-organized and quite romantic:
(Highest grade of dessert from southeast Asia, Decorate with the unique fresh fruit, meet them like meeting by chance romantically)

After perusing my menu, I went to the restroom. And it was there that quite by chance, and not exactly unromantically, I met those fresh fruit. They were hanging there on the wall, side by side, inconspicuous, a trifle out of place, but for the most part amusingly organic, shyly blending in with the general atmosphere of the place. Used as symbolic denotations, the fruit non-verbally indicated the room for the gents, and that for the dames respectively (and a little less respectfully). Which is which, I trust you may easily guess on your own. Quite an original, touching and daring design, - and I immediately developed a liking to the creative streak and the design taste of the restaurant management.

At the second glance the menu seemed loaded.

Further, the machine translation tools issued several noteworthy gems.

The list of viands presented us with a description of how the dish was made:

We learned what one-piece grilled things do in Japan:

The capital of the New York State is shown in a debunking light - now we know how they deal with triumphant outcomes:
The last dish on today's menu offers a certain variety for the flight of imagination; whatever happened there, you can have it for 10 yuan:

TM fusion

2007-11-15T23:16:00.000+08:00

A chaser to my post about Nokia'ed Samsung - there was that pic on the net quite a while ago:

Now - I always thought that those funnies jump under the noses of the select few extremely lucky people who are able to detect fun around us.

But hey - I was lucky this time too. And it is not a sneaky driver of a Pepsi truck taking a swig of the competitor on the sly - here is a full-blown campaign on wheels. I guess they are trying to kill two birds with one stone - creating intensified customer awareness in the fledging Chinese market. Either that or the Swedes really got next to the Japanese of which I am not aware, the ignoramus...

Non-related cultural note. Pay attention to the plastic-covered bicycle seats - it is a useful habit - usually after a day of having the bike parked outside you can virtually write in the dust accumulated on it.

6 word stories

2007-11-13T22:20:00.000+08:00

After yesterday's post with allusion to Hemingway's six word story, I found several similar gems on the net - which I mischievously will copy-paste here. The fuller version you may find here (that's where I have ruthlessly snatched it from) and here.

So here is the list. I am not flaming here, but you might try creating your own 6-word masterpieces. And even share it with me. Mine is at the bottom of the list.

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please.
- Steven Meretzky

We kissed. She melted. Mop please!
- James Patrick Kelly

It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon

I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.
- Stephen Baxter

Epitaph: He shouldn't have fed it.
- Brian Herbert

Nevertheless, he tried a third time.
- James P. Blaylock

Thought I was right. I wasn't.
- Graeme Gibson

I saw, darling, but do lie.
- Orson Scott Card

Dorothy: "Fuck it, I'll stay here."
- Steven Meretzky

Seven years. Unearned degree. Already balding.

"Enlarge!"... Email's right or 'tis winter?

School Desk Graffiti

2007-11-12T22:29:00.001+08:00

When I was at school I remember we used to write on the desks names of those popular rock bands (I personally did Metallica, Twisted Sister and Helloween - with all the picturesque elaborations of logo details), excerpts from their profound lyrics (which I am now afraid to even recollect), or messages to those who would sit at that particular desk next ("if you don't wanna study, add a car to the train" - with a nice long train formation puffing form one end of the desk to the other), or some useful technological images ("the lecturer sleep-mode button"), or various verbalized and engraved emotional cries form the depths...

Anyhow, the messages stood for something - some declaration or claim or what not.

I do realize this picture taken at a Chinese university symbolizes the quick-witted attempt at a crib for an exam of sorts, but it does have the air of a slogan and at the same time some existential drama. It was a surprise to see it glaring in solitude from the otherwise chaste greenish-yellow wooden surface. Gave my imagination a nudge in the context of the country's love for sloganism, struggle against the population boost and the sexual revolution in the minds of a trifle westernized pubescence-swirled students.
Only 5 words:
induce abortion
sexual intercourse
abandon

Food for thought along the lines of Hemingway's six word story.

Hooray! Hooray!

2007-11-11T23:08:00.000+08:00

I caught this dude in a supermarket some time ago - couldn't help stopping him and asking to pose for a picture.

I am not sure how those people do communism or whether the idea is that they enroll after getting hooked (or whatever the lingo is now), but it is pretty hilarious to see such a shirt in the streets of China. I guess it may be a bigger hit in the streets of, say, San Francisco.

Anyhow, anyone interested in ordering some T-shirts?

Slumberous in China

2007-11-10T09:14:00.000+08:00

Here is a web-site I found recently on vast zero-one'ed prairies, and it stirred up my own long-gone marveling at how and where 'these guys can sleep':
Meet www.sleepingchinese.com - a photo album of a co-expat who is stealing glances at the so often found here public embraces between the Chinese and Morpheus, stilling those fleeting (and not so much) moments in digital format.

He did what I tried to do, organizing those curious shots into a one-place collection, but I too had a couple of similar encounters - which I present here in my worthless blog. There is nothing funny or mocking therein, just a curious glance of a traveler marveling at how unpretentious my hosts can be in the matters of reposing after yet another round in the 'Survival of the Fittest' reality show.

I actually have quite a collection of this kind of pics, and many of those might have been copied from somebody else's blogs or forums for my own enjoyment, - but for the weight of time I fail to remember your honorable names, oh most worthy authors! Could you forgive me for not mentioning your excellent names while giving my friends a sneak peek at your wonderful pictures? Thank you.

This is definitely from some Chinese forum, copyright is rightly considered a mauvais ton, with which I full-heartedly agree, this should be made public!

Same Sing. The pictures at the beginning of the post belongs to the same category.

That's my own picture, I snapped it a while ago in Fujian. That's the after-the-lunch-time sleeping time of day. The cook must have been working pretty hard - at noon everybody has that community-feel eating urge, but after you are good for dozing off a few hours. Because the restaurant will be deserted. Why? 'Coz everyone is doing you-can-see-what in all the pictures of this post! ))

No trace on this one - but it has been on the net awhile. The report they are listening to must be really exciting. Hey, you heard about that learning tendency when you memorize things better in the sleep?

I took this one in Beijing, Yabaolu.

On a bus in Hui'An, Fujian Province.

Shishi, Fujian. I took it when we went there on a trip to find samples of fabrics.

This is a street on Hainan island, taken by a good person Lola. I wonder if these guys are moving together with the shadow or the automation of the process lets them blend into the shade of the tree next in line?

I can't put my finger on the memories associated with this one... Could be somebody else's.

Can it be…the most beautiful word in the world?..

2007-11-08T15:57:00.000+08:00

Via Berlin Metroblogging:

" A competition entitled "The most beautiful ABC of the world" ("Das schönste ABC der Welt") which was held in Berlin awarded the Turkish "yakamoz" the title, the most beautiful word of the world. The jury selected it from almost 2500 words.

"Yakamoz" means "the reflection of the moon in water". The Chinese word "hu lu" (呼噜, to snore) came in second. The African word "Volongoto" (Baganda tribe), which means messy or chaotic, was voted third place. According to the jury, they selected "yakamoz" over the others because in Turkish one is able to express in a single word, what can only be expressed in other languages using multiple nouns. "

So - is the victory of "yakamoz" a kind of homage to the increasing inflow of northbound southern immigrants? And linguistically, do the parts of the word actually carry all those separate meanings making up the whole constellation, or the associations with reflections, water and moon are called in mind by social conventions?

Like you know, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! (super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragillistic- "delicate," expeali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," -> "Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty.")

At a Linguistics conference one professor said that if a culture really needs to have a name for a notion, this name will be created. An example he gave was: if a culture considers relevant to name an act of a black middle-aged man crawling over a fence at midnight (with any of the semantic constituents relevant enough to differentiate this act from any other similar, though specifically out-standing ones, - then a word will be born. I forgot if he actually gave a possible example of such a hypothetic lexical unit. I wonder what it might be...

So unless a culture needs not such a word, descriptive attributes will suffice. Another curious example of this idea is that not many languages have a single word for the back of the knee... whatever it is called.

And, finally, what made "hu lu" sound beautiful? I am sure they took into consideration all the allusions and connotations of the word's semantics. Why, Russian speakers will agree with me, not "hu li" (狐狸, fox), - talking about associations and stuff? Makes me wanna dig into the depths of the Chinese semantics with doubled effort.

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay!

Russian inside: Hardly the most beautiful semantics but amazing linguistic coincidences. Мир-труд-мяч практически :)

Linguo-cultural baby name galore

2007-11-06T21:25:00.000+08:00

I don't even know if Chinese baby name sites exist, and I am lazy to run a search on it or even bother to turn on my fat butt and ask, but my hunch is that they are not necessary at all. As my experience shows, - and through my hands has passed many a student, - a Chinese name may be anything which sounds auspicious and thus is bound to bring good luck. That brings in my memory the university Linguistics course where we learned that certain peoples were so very impressed with the gadgets of civilization introduced by the ~~while barbarians~~ brave pioneers that they named their newly born "Irons", "Refrigerators" and the like. Christianity limits the number of names which seems just logical to me, but I am biased.

Via a respected blogger Steve Webel whom I do not know personally, but who is a thing in itself (himself?) and thus may be considered a name so popular an extra advertisement will be for him but like a drop in the sea; and via Foxnews I came to know this piece of news. At dawn of the Beijing Olympic Games a new name is gaining popularity among newly born Chinese babies: Olympics (Aoyun). Read the article snatched form the Foxnews below, but in the meantime lemme show off a little. It tickled my linguistic ego to know that "Aoyun" (奥运) is a shortened form of "ao lin pi ke yun dong hui"(奥林匹克运动会) - the whole phrase meaning 'Olympic games'. Good that the vernacular allows for shortening.

Curious thing about it - I know that at a certain time in Russia it was a trendy thing to name girls “Olimpiada”. How many middle-aged ladies are treading the newly fallen snows now - only the statistics-crazy people may know. But it's certainly a tendency.

"BEIJING — The upcoming Beijing Olympics is more than just a point of pride for China — it's such an important part of the national consciousness that nearly 3,500 children have been named for the event, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Most of the 3,491 people with the name "Aoyun," meaning Olympics, were born around the year 2000, as Beijing was bidding to host the 2008 Summer Games, the Beijing Daily reported, citing information from China's national identity card database.

The vast majority of people named Aoyun are male, the newspaper said. Only six live in Beijing. The report didn't say where the others live.

Names related to the Olympics don't just stop with "Olympics." More than 4,000 Chinese share their names with the Beijing Games mascots, the "Five Friendlies."

The names are Bei Bei (880 people), Jing Jing (1,240), Huan Huan (1,063), Ying Ying (624) and Ni Ni (642). When put together, the phrase translates to "Beijing welcomes you!"

Chinese have increasingly turned to unique names as a way to express a child's individuality.

In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, 87 percent share the same 129 family names. That's why 5,598 people have the same name as basketball player Yao Ming and 18,462 share a moniker with star hurdler Liu Xiang, according to the Beijing Daily report.

Parents have turned to unusual combinations of letters, numbers and symbols when choosing their child's name, Li Yuming, deputy director of the National Language Commission, told the Xinhua News Agency in an August interview.

At least one couple wanted to call their child "1A," he said, while others use the e-mail address symbol (at), which in Chinese is pronounced "Aita," meaning "love him.""

Boy / Gal

2007-11-05T23:48:00.001+08:00

Surprised as I am that my little quiz caused interest among the public, I am now answering that question about gender characteristics of the crabs featured here.
The one on the left is a boy, the other one is, well, not so hard to figure out now : )

Funny thing, female crabs are more expensive on the market these days - they go for 6 Yuan (~75 cents) apiece, whereas males are surprisingly depreciated - only 5.5 Yuan (~68 cents). Rumor has it females are tastier.

What's cooking up in Zhuhai

2007-11-04T00:41:00.000+08:00

I always find it intriguing to know how my friends live in all those countries across the oceans. Likewise, I think, it would be thrilling for y'all to know how your old pal Sergio is scraping through in the south of China. Here I am gonna take you on an exhilarating ride through the culinary adventures of my today's evening.

We made up our minds to cook crabs. In the supermarket the stand with live sea critters was a bit to the side, with not a lot of people milling around, so we decided to give it a try and buy the three most vicious reps of the claw-wielding crustaceans. One finger was bitten, a piece of paper clawed to rags, but the first round ended up in our unequivocal victory and with the score of one-to-nil the crabs traveled across town to our apartment.

It was the first time we cooked crabs...

First we washed them with a brush,
checked for primary gender characters
(BTW, can you guess who is the boy and who is the girl in the picture above?)

and, the match ended with the smashing victory of the cooks, who steamed the three crabsketeers in a pot over a secret crafty potion of water and beer (to add beer was my ingenious pioneering invention). If you are interested, the crabs are to be steamed for half an hour with ginger and then served with a sauce of your liking.
Here it is, our blushed sea food.

2007-11-03T01:34:00.000+08:00

Bank of China ATM shack
You know me, I am not mocking anybody for no typos/innocent mistakes. I myself am the greatest mistake-maker. But it is the beauty I see in the typos that catch my attention
Isn't there something Scandinavian in this inscription?

Slips of the pen are mightier than those of the tongue

2007-11-01T22:30:00.000+08:00

I have been collecting excerpts from my students' essays for quite some time. Now it is about the right time to publish my little collection.

They have a certain vision of the future:

Just as ripe fruit will usually be picked to satisfy people's stomach, most graduates will function in different social positions as screws or nuts.

They have a strong belief in their thrilling and sci-fi future which defies the laws of matter and time:

College graduates will meet the great scholars' minds in the past.

Their ingenuous outlook on life cannot but be touching though it causes just a little concern for their social circles:

And I am so glad to say that I am so lucky because I have had several closed friends till now, and I feel happy every day.

They are friendly and always want to help. The only setback is they don’t know how.

I go to the library often. Here I am available to a wide variety of books.

They are keen on philosophy and are happy to cite the ‘Confucius said’ maxims:

The girl who always wear skirts is not only beautiful but also capable.

They strongly hold their opinions on gender problems... Wherever is this world going to:

Now men have become easier than women. ...Since women have been recognized more and more, have them been easier? On the contrary, they bare more than men.

Among the vicissitudes of life they are patient and enduring:

... it can see to our future that we can hold water facing our own life

Honestly, it is a relief that the university has managed to do them some good:

As a vice president of the *** association I have learned how to communicate with my head.

More to follow.

Good girls must be a trifle down in the mouth over there...

2007-10-28T22:55:00.000+08:00

Heck of a design finding - red letters on a red background...
Should be a subliminal message, not less.

China mooning on the moon

2007-10-26T12:08:00.000+08:00

Today in my class the students were discussing China's launch of a satellite which is supposed to orbit the Moon.

I was about to ask the question of whether the satellite would actually land on the Moon, but then I thought that the verb 'to land' has some exclusive 'Earth-like' connotations, so on the spur of the moment I had nothing better to say than: "So is China going to moon on the Moon?"

I do not know how to wittingly connect my slip of the tongue with the possible repercussions of the event, but in the meantime I follow the news with a certain degree of interest.

Advertising fusion

2007-10-23T22:10:00.000+08:00

Another remarkable sight of the city of Tula. It's not even a question of who paid whom )

A new line of hygiene products

2007-10-21T21:12:00.000+08:00

Do I actually need to bother?

A new generation of shower gels - apply and rub in till the desired effect is achieved.
You gotta be careful though.

How to run a country

2007-10-20T23:21:00.000+08:00

Is that only me, or is Youtube really blocked? The word of mouth is that it is blocked only in China, but it also keeps being blocked if I try to use proxies - does it basically mean the keepers of the Great Firewall of China have finally figured out how evil content seeps through into the empire?

This makes it look like some heavy stuff - usually any blocked website was accessible through a proxy, - I can still go to all the other blacklisted sites - which makes their blockage 'light' - thus bringing the game on a whole new level. ...Who knows, maybe it is just a paranoid thought anyhow and youtube is down by itself. (tell me?)

But since the Party Congress is on, the rumor has it that it's the echo of the security getting tougher - and after having shed the liberal veneer of my juvenile understanding of the world, I can actually see the point of the big shots at the steering wheel - if they have to rule a country the way they have it, they just gotta do what they gotta do. No use bitching about the blocked internet content, I ain't in the same weight category with them anyway to change the situation (yet, may I add for the record).

All I wanna say is how the locals are taking it. Here is my dialog with a girl in my creative writing class, who wanted to start her English language blog:

I: Wow, way to go, girl, (I hope you appreciate the alliteration - the writer's note) that's a nifty idea!
Her: Yeah, yeah, but as you know there is the Party Congress going on now ...
I: Huh? (trying to bridge the two subject matters, as many a time you just have to make an extra effort to connect the not so obvious dots to get the picture)
Her (with not a trace of discontent): So whenever I write in English the posts do not appear immediately now.
I: ...
Her: And I like to see the posts appear immediately - and that's what happens with posts in Chinese.
I: ...
Her: So the posts have to be checked to see if there is anything wrong in them. And it is probably easier to check them if they are in Chinese. So I prefer to write in Chinese for the time being. (The actual cuteness to the whole thing was added when I read what she writes about - a description of her day and terror of missing a class sprinkled with 'hello-kitty' smilies.)

Now, what I want to observe, - without being judgmental or anything, - is that (1) the people are aware of the Big Brother's presence, with certain understanding of the reasons, they take it for granted and don't sweat it. 'Coz they are not planning to write anything objectionable anyhow, and are ready to amend if needs be,
(2) that - obviously - the quantity of English-reading ranks is by far outweighed by pure-lingual officials, though laowai teachers are gradually improving the situation,
(3) that - doh! - I am being read by at least somebody,
(4) it sure is a nice thing to have oneself a country of understanding citizens,
(5) the revelation I thought I received at the time of our dialog was by far more rapturous than my lame ranting right now,
(6) you gotta keep your fingers on the pulse of everything that's going on in the country you own if you wanna keep it, a hard thought to get adjusted to, but for some strange reason the world today suggests more and more that it ain't too crazy a thought after all (and as it turns out has never been - congratulate me, I am maturing : ))
(7) the thought 'Hey, that's a stupid way to run things! All the people I respect are mocking the way they do things! We know how to deal in politics and what not. I could have done it better." does not seem like a terribly clever one any more, but rather makes me be thankful that I am not given a chance to screw things up even worse on that level with all my knowledge of how to.

was in Tula

2007-10-20T02:36:00.000+08:00

2 months ago we were in Russia - about time to show that sparkling wall art - Russian inside

ул. Гоголевская "Все блондинки тупые!!!! За Единую Россию!"

ул. Каминского "Люблю тебя не смотря не на что"

ЦПКиО "С праздником тул"

ул. Демонстрации (?) "мусорОВ только в контейнер"

Forskin kneading

2007-10-18T21:32:00.000+08:00

Usually the personnel at public baths / massage parlors are not that happy about customers taking pictures of the interiors, but in this case I just had to take this picture. Snapped with a phone camera and all blurry - the sign at the 2nd floor of the Shanghai massage place introduces the services offered, and reads among other useful pieces of information: "... bath salt and essential of milk forskin kneading" (A mixture of bath salt and milk for that very kneading). A masseur in a wife-beater and underpants is waiting for his next victim. I marko polo'ed into that massage dealie and yes, it was quite a nice experience - the skin (all over but the advertised location) is indeed kneaded with salt and milk - quite refreshing. To be totally objective it needs to be said that such slip of the space bar is quite suggestive of the actual services rendered several storeys above the decent second floor, but I of course shy away from those sultry locations giving preference to the healthy hot rooms, swimming pools and a clean rub-down of the second floors.

A garment store in Macao - Wanko, your primary choice of felicitously-named apparel.

Intercultural communicator's delight

2007-10-14T23:10:00.000+08:00

Russians are overtaking the Chinese market. Subliminally as they do it. (Knowledge of Russian required)

I know a couple of Dimons who will gladly don a T-shirt made by this company:

Fu Kang utensils managed to find a funky latinzed name for their goods. If a couple of guys I know back in Russia with the same name decide to import those, that's the best advertisement they may dream of:
The guys at Bei E Jin IT appliances have done their homework in classics, Pushkin's novels are now glorified through millions of routers and modems:

And for the dessert today:
In Zhuhai. An actual store. I could hardly believe my eyes as I noticed it in passing:This begins the introduction of quite a few Chinese companies who are ready to enter the Russian market right now.

Inspirational writer needed, value of (a) space

2007-09-13T15:11:00.000+08:00

Comforts of a bus ride

2007-05-30T18:26:00.000+08:00

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.

Today's graphorrhea

2007-05-24T17:15:00.001+08:00

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.

Writers' bog

2007-05-22T22:27:00.000+08:00

...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 20” LCD 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.

Here is a good one

2007-05-21T23:07:00.001+08:00

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.

Get a thrill!

2007-05-19T23:56:00.000+08:00

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.

Victory Day

2007-05-08T23:33:00.000+08:00

C ДНЕМ ПОБЕДЫ!

The ‘Tooth Shall Set You Handsfree

2007-04-19T22:19:00.000+08:00

Here is an example of an intriguing style in advertising : )

Curse my dashing, sophisticated continental style. You see, I wouldn’t think of getting behind the wheel of my Alfa Romeo without my full-fingered deerskin driving gloves. But what do I do when my mobile phone rings? It might be my investment advisor calling from Dubai, or my haberdasher letting me know that this week’s new suits are finished. In other words, essential business. But I can’t push the little buttons on my sleek, sexy phone while I’m wearing gloves. And a gentleman always drives with gloves on.

Perhaps the Siemens Bluetooth Car Kit may be of assistance. With a built-in speaker and microphone and a navigation screen, it transforms my Bluetooth phone into a handsfree system. I can talk while zooming through the Riviera, with a minimum of compromise to my distinctive, impeccable style. But does my phone have the required handsfree profile? I’ll have to pull over and check.

The original is here.

Thanks, Nat

Chinese hospital - from the horse's mouth

2007-04-19T00:33:00.000+08:00

A catch-up on the events of 3 months ago - might be interesting for Cathay-inclined...

It happened with me in January. Who could have believed - winter again, and again I am inflicted with pneumonia darn it.

Spent some time at an authentic Chinese hospital, now that the employer doesn't pay for the expenses - the way ASE did in Lianyungang, every day costs about 500 yuan. Bugger. On the other hand, if life throws this dealie in my direction, it sure wants to tell me something, and I have to walk through this field patiently... They say bloodletting is healthy. Might be good for my savings as well ; ))

In general food is not included in the overall treatment at the Chinese hospitals and patients have to take care of the nourishing all by themselves (note - in Russian hospitals where I had a misfortune to spend some quality time, feeding the patients is a sort of an inclusive service). Good thing my girlfriend visited me every day, otherwise I don’t know how I could have pulled through.

Now - everything I am writing here is not some grouching over things I don't like or don't understand, but rather a description of something that gave me a sort of a culture shock, stirred up my feelings and thinking; and I decided to share this unusual experience. I am of course grateful, and a hundred of kowtows to the doctors who pulled me out of a nasty disease, if not for them, you know. Anyhow -

Warning - people with unstable nerves would be better off not reading this;)

When we came there to be admitted I was offered either a 2-bed or a 5-bed ward. I naturally go like - ''Who’s in the semi-private ward?'' - ''Well, '' they say, ''there is this new dude, we are still unsure what he’s got; spits blood. '' I prick up my ears and venture to ask if it might be tuberculosis? ''We don't know, '' they say, ''maybe not'' :-E

I say, ''But what if maybe yes? '' - ''Well, if yes, we’ll transfer you to another ward, but so far it’s ok''.

Now, I am not a doc or anything, but to put people with pneumonia and tuberculosis (even under question) in the same ward is, to articulate it mildly, a bit off. A Chinese roulette.

I cautiously continue: "And is there anyone with tuberculosis in the 5-people ward?" The nurse scratched her white head-gear, starting to get tired of a laowai who asks too much and said she didn't know. Which, I venture again, may mean that 'maybe yes'? The nurse: ''I am not responsible for that ward''. But I get the whiff that such a situation is nothing out of the ordinary. I am shocked all over after being dealt such a challenging hand, sitting in that nurse room, thinking that I cannot just go home and deteriorate, I need to get some treatment, but will probably have to gamble here, so at least there is no need to cross the border to Macao. It is apparent the nurses see such a pricky patient for the first time and start to lose patience. Well, I gotta do something, so I choose the 5-people ward. According to the latest information there was no one with tuberculosis there.

So there I was with 4 other dudes. One is coughing away, sticking out his tongue in raptures with ardour and half-closed eyes... I ask the nurse, why don’t you tell him anything, it's insanitariness and all, - and she is like: well, it’s his cultural tradition, cannot change it, so you gotta be a little careful; and she kind of keeps turning her masked face to the wall. 8-E Later this same dude is sitting by his bed, gurgles some water from a glass and bang! - with gusto spits it all out on the floor in the ward. Even more shocked, I hid under the blanket, pulled a surgical mask over my face and looked around winking helplessly. And that dude looks at me squinting from time to time, like saying, what, little laowai, scared yet?

I asked the doctors later - it is surely not only a western tradition to cover the mouth when coughing, - yeah, they say, people should do it here, it’s universal, specially in the medical surroundings. But you are doctors, why don’t you tell him, it’s not about aesthetics anymore, but purely for the health of the nation! NOBODY dared to ask him. Probably respect his old age. Well, I thought about stepping up but thought better of it... Just imagine - an aged guy with a lot of problems on his mind is being taught by a younger guy, a snotty laowai to top it up, who with aplomb and irritation tells him how to live his life, especially in the way that is so strange in his picture of the world. I figured the result would be surprise and rejection - in a happy case of his nerves being alright... My gf even laughed outloud when I tried to describe to her such a variant. ...The dude himself was quite cool otherwise, - a hoar-touched pony-tail, which he let out through the rear hole of his baseball cap in a hip way. And a goatee. Looked to me like a real Taoist or a free-thinking artist. Exactly the way I envisioned Taoists who were at the same time independent artists. I even felt a bit of shame after getting angry at his behavior, for it is quite natural and devoid of conventionalities... I figure the Taoists used to live this way for thousands of years in their mountains and other convenient places, with no concern of some not-yet-invented stipulations. And, on the other hand, it is a kind of natural selection and free vaccination for the ones lucky to be the fittest.

BTW, another curious thing about that hospital, - as it is known, to the south of the Huanghe (or is it Yangze?) River the central heating does not exist at all, hospitals are no exception either, so the people are wandering around in hats and coats right indoors. Of course the greatcoats are not taken off when going to bed. Reminds of a field hospital and gives a disturbing feeling of unsettlement, - but it looks this way only for the slickers entangled in their weird conventionalities, ain't it?

It is necessary to mention that for the sake of disinfection the window and the door opposite it are wide open - the breeze is traveling through the room, everybody is in an overcoat and some with woolen hats on, with pneumonias and coughs are watching TV. A laowai's soul, brought up on the belief that a hospital is a place of calm and comfortable atmosphere for a recuperating organism, might want to stir up in righteous indignation, but later on a philosophical wave it calms down and adjusts to the oriental wisdom: should we air the room? Sure thing. If it is cold we got all those overcoats on. So: the pesky infection is being frozen to death, the body is being tempered, and if anyone is bothering you with his cough, cough back to him to gain the balance of elements. Amazingly, nobody argues, everything is in perfect equilibrium, - when I closed those doors and windows, nobody uttered a word, but after the first person passing through the door the left it ajar, and the window returned to its initial open state with a little help by a concerned relative of a recuperating fellow. No discussion of what is better for health, what the rules are; everyone is content and this whole thing exists in a universe parallel to that of medical books - which, I am sure, are not too different from those used westwards from here.

Later they did transfer me to a 2-people ward. The ward-mate turned out to be a calm grandpa, but sometimes he did venture out of the usual indifferent state. My gf asked him once - is it ok if we watch some TV while you are talking to your relatives - he says yeah, but without sound, because I am sleeping. And the whole crowd goes on chattering. Then the gaffer raises on an elbow, looks at me and with distinctive pressure says ''Sleep!'' It’s either he orders me or makes a comment on what he’s doing. But anyhow, he let us know he’s not your usual simpleton from the street. Now I start thinking whether he digs English being a Kuomintang spy, and actually gets everything we are talking about without ceremony. His family is alright, there are always a daughter present, the wife, and loads of other relatives hanging around. I am keeping the temperature condition in the room under control, the windows and doors are closed on a regular basis, and the grandpa doesn’t protest. The window faces a corner of a seaside and the sun-lit town.

The visitors of that hospital are coming and going whenever they want, no rules about clothes and shoes. Nice laid-back attitude.

Actually I have a hunch that just a generation passes - and the new generation is already being taught the manners and everything, without wasting much sap for re-educating the venerable elders - and in a couple of decades China will be all renovated, - 'tis a nice policy. And respectful, to top it up. In the meantime though, you gotta take a little care of yourself.

COSMOS-46

2007-04-12T23:17:00.000+08:00

46 years ago the first man was sent out into the space. Politics apart, that was indeed a leap forward. And I suggest we do not forget who and where did it.

Поехали!

Pictures of China

2007-04-09T16:17:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine has sent me a couple of links from this site:
Besides being an intersting web-site in itself, it has a collection of pictures which are really something, asking to be bound up on glossy paper into a coffee-table album.

Pictures from the streets, villages, homes, etc. are something to be witnessed here on a daily basis; several are real gems which I guess were hard to make. I did not find any copyright notes on that site, so just see my post as a note to friends. Somethings like stealing a few peeks at China.

The full collection can be seen here, over there, there and also everywhere...

Another renowned interpreter pays a visit to the school

2007-03-24T19:24:00.000+08:00

On March 23, 2007 Dr. Kevin Lin - a Chief Interpreter of the British Foreign Office, an interpreter of Tony Blair, who has worked with most of the major contemporary Chinese political officials, who teaches translation techniques in Britain and who has opened an interpreting company and a consultancy (as I assume also in England) gave a lecture at Sun Yatsen Univeristy.
The auditorium was packed - those students who came by the announced time had to stand near the entrance very close to the pulpit hearkening to the prophecies of the interpreting guru (check out the young aspiring interpreter near the door in a fancy dress and a star on the forehead). We waited only for an extra 30 minutes before the lecture started, and - despite the Chair's promise that the talk would be in English, - the man said a sentence in Shakespearean and switched over to Chinese.

But I was blessed with a beautiful simultaneous interpreter by my side, so it was not only comfortable for me but also useful for her practice.

To our delight we found out that Kevin Lin comes from around Putian in Fujian - where he'd finished grammar school and from where he set out on his journey to interpreting and - consequently, - fame among those in the know. The anecdotes from his life and practical examples were actually more or less understandable to me in spite of my lame Chinese.

Kevin advertised his book Field Interpreting that the wild students rushed to have signed after the lecture, and even I lost my head for a moment and wanted to immediately purchase the Chinese-English folio. During the question time, (as it later turned out) my restless students sent a note to Kevin asking him to cut to the chase and finally show his skills, - to interpret 'live' something the only loawai in the room (i.e. myself) would be uttering from the stage. To the bursts of laughter I valiantly jumped forward and, deciding not to make a speech in Russian (would have been a hilarious stunt though), I asked the public whether they would like to see the interpreter of Blair (feels pretty nice to be interpreted by a person like that) do simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, -
and this very question was happily re-laid into fast Chinese, culminating in applause and cheerful hooting. Kevin did it easily and nicely, - a real pleasure to listen to a professional.

So if anyone wants to improve their Chinese-English interpreting skills, I am sure Kevin Lin would be happy to assist you in this honorable task.

Wo kao

2007-03-24T19:20:00.000+08:00

我。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。kao

A Laowai in Russia

2007-03-15T16:29:00.000+08:00

When I was in Russia this winter I actually beheld snow for the first time in, like, 4 years, and was as excited as a child touching it and making snowballs and throwing them everywhere, all this with unconventional luster in my wild eyes behind the slightly fogged glasses and a wandering smile on my sensual lips. Exactly the reaction people who see it all every day have not. And dressed for the weather I was - to the best of my realization of it. A dress-style that caused my mom to chuckle. Yeah, she loves me, that's what I took her happy laugh for.
So I was walking along the street, throwing snowballs into the trees and making loads of steam form behind my hip scarf, which helpfully added to the romantic matt in my specs through which I was taking in the surrounding reality which in its turn glittered in the sun and engulfed me in that tasty and crisp nose-nipping chilly air. The sun was shining in the azure sky, the birds cheerfully chirped around, and the snow was crunching under my feet. The little square in front of the Central Park seemed especially picturesque to me and, heaping up my bags from the supermarket on the snow, I skillfully hoisted my phone/camera and started clicking away, giving birth to masterpieces:
Suddenly I heard something that didn't really quite register with me: "Hello! Hello-o". The reality rocked a trifle from side to side, shifting the awareness-borderline between being in China and - on the other hand - in Russia. I turned my head in the direction of what I thought was a phantom from my Chinese reality, only to see a bunch of 15-year old girls giggling and bunching up, whispering loudly something like "Uh, a foreigner? Must be a tourist... Hello! giggle-giggle".

Now - is it me becoming a foreigner in Russia or is it Russia getting more like China in the behavioral patterns of the people? Maybe it was my funny choice of clothes (which looked totally normal to me) and my taking photos of a totally common picture... Or is it me acquiring the air of a laowai, subconsciously causing everybody to giggle and shout 'hello!'?

But apart form that amusing incident it turned out to be quite a successful wintery winter with all the due characteristics:

Simultaneous Chinese <> English expert

2007-03-12T13:21:00.000+08:00

Please meet Macro Dai - the first Chinese simultaneous interpreter I met in person. I heard such professionals exist, but are extremely rare due to the uttermost diffirences in the language structures and mind sets in which the Western and Asian cultures dwell. But here you go.We met in Shenzhen, in that unidentifyable weather pregnant with rain and pressing down on you with moist implications of the heat. My friend and I were treated by Mr. Dai to a tasty dinner and a most interesting conversation. Anyhow, it is always nice to talk with an intelligent person. Mr. Dai has been in the industry for 12 years and is now opening his own interpreting company - check www.macrointer.com. Interested parties are welcome to establish contacts and I think Macro and myself will be cooperating in the future.

Weather vicissitudes

2007-03-07T22:55:00.000+08:00

Funny thing - I was in Russia for the winter vacation (some 50 odd days it was - so far the winner of the winter vacation length competition) and in the three weeks there the weather changed from around minus 30 C (minus 22 F) to zero (32F) and back about a couple times. I started missing the warm beaches of Zhuhai

with people sleeping right on the embankments,
and palm trees with weird acorn-coconuts,

so just looking at the Zhuhai weather forecasts on the net made me happy, and when I came back to the South China's +20~27 C (68~80F) I never suspected what a climatic change I'd brought on my tail. In just a couple of days 27 degrees turned to meager 9 (48F). You see the pattern? Here's something to worry about.

UPD: In Moscow it is +8 and sunny on Thursday, almost like we have it in the subtropics.

The Great Chinese Internet Gray-out

2007-01-04T00:26:00.000+08:00

Looks like I can manage to publish now what I wrote about the late-December earthquake a week ago.

I was mindin' my own humble translator's business yesterday (Dec. 27), finishing up the last order and getting ready to finally set up a Livejournal community for our student-teacher creativity gig. My head as usual these days was mildly spinning for the lack of sleep and the abundance of things to do, so I didn't really notice the slight movement of the chair under me, writing it off on the need to rest. But the shaking of the ground became more consistent, demanding my attention with every gentle wave of the curtain and beckoning of the headphone cord hanging down from the table lamp. I listened in, trying to hope it was still me perceiving the world in a weird way rather then the reality knocking on the door of my private universe.

After some sober assessments it turned out it was the house that was actually shaking. Hoping for the better but preparing for the worst I bravely pulled on the pants, getting ready to leave my 5th floor at the first sign of a more dangerous event, but the translator’s conscience made me finish off the job, and by that time the surreal spinning of the reality stopped. Though the image of myself stumbling into my socks, hardly managing to slip them on, and the thought about my probable inability to coordinate my survival actions should the need be, made me wonder how far set back our daily routine is in the face of an emergency which - God forbid - may happen at the time unknown. Something to think about.

In the morning the next day I performed my early-bird's routine, which usually concludes with quenching my curiosity as to what the mailboxes contain. But not this time. All the desired sites refused to load, though the connection existed, teasing me with the headers of the pages I was so eager to observe, but the Chinese sites happily jumped onto the screen. The bright thought about connecting those two events appeared immediately but as immediately was discarded ... And as it turned out, wrongly so. The suddenly valuable news that managed to squeeze through clearly stated that the earthquake south of Taiwan shook the ocean floor shifting some relevant slabs over the fiber-glass thoroughfares of information exchange between the Mainland and the world. The director of the centralized Chinese internet office or whatever it is called said that they are trying to reconnect China with the rest of the world, but it is not known when the success of such an operation may even dawn on the horizon of our hopes. Now the so familiar means of communication gave in, and in their ebb there rose a long-shooed impending thought whispering that all the cable-dependant gizmos are nothing but a toy compared with the raw physical power, - on inactivity of which all those gadgets actually depend. It's good there are still people around who remember how to live without the internet, and even those who know other people who remember how to live without the telephone.

On the other hand, could a country really depend on only one path of information transfer? I am a simple-minded man, and here is just a simple thought - it's all actually a good cover to cut off unwanted traffic. Of course this not being the case now.

December update

2006-12-18T22:11:00.000+08:00

Not too much time for writing - hectic translation orders are dropping one by one, had to prepare and deliver a lecture on cinema (went pear shaped and flew over the heads of the listeners with all that semiotix and art theories), still have to prepare and deliver a lecture on interpreting (having wised up I guess I gotta make it simple and anecdotal) - and last week we had a sort of a competition at our university where I was one of the judges. It was a sort of a language 'KBH' (excuse my Russian) or some language juggling where teams had to dub movies and play with words and some such. One task impressed me because they had to (as per the description) in turn produce sentences made of words 'whose initial letter follows the order of the alphabet'. Pretty nifty, thought my colleague Ken and I, and right before the beginning of the show concocted a sentence where all the words started with the letters of the alphabet in order. Happened to be not so easy but fun.

A boy caught dogs eating fried (germs) goat however in joking killed lots more new or prosperous quintessential rodents sitting together under very warm xenophobic yawning zebras.

At the end it turned out that the teams had to make sentences with the FIRST word of the consecutive sentence starting with the next letter of the alphabet. But it was fun having a go at it. I guess some pastime.
~~~~~~~~
What surprised me with its seemingly shallow purpose was the task of watching a part of a movie and then dubbing it with EXACTLY the same words. No kinky perversions or changes of meaning. But later it dawned upon me that it is actually a very cool way to practice and learn a language, repeating all those intonation patterns and all. Kinda boring on the audience but pretty exciting for the teams. And what is the university life if not loads of unreigned fuuun?!))
~~~~~~~~
Another nice thing here is that by Christmas time waitresses in restaurants and shop assistants wear those (fake) fur-padded red vests and red a-la S.Claus hats with these little white pompons at the top. Looks cheerful. With all the palms and sunshine.
~~~~~~~
But I am freezing my @$$ off in the unheated apartment. Doh! Subtropics my ... that thing. The cracks in the doors and balcony are so huge the draft is coming over to visit all the time with the howling sound that used to scare me at the beginning but now is just a background noise (to make an acoustic comparison, pretty much like the toilet flushing upstairs or downstairs here - a fact of life, not a reason for bitching, eh?)) A comfort is that my flushing is as loud for them as theirs for me. Or for that reason, if you will, the cheerful chirping of birds is better audible too. Going back to the little eddy breezes that dance around my apartment - on a positive note they are bringing some fresh air into my otherwise stuffy world. Constantly. Some healthy circulation.

A CORRECT POLITICAL DECISION

2006-12-02T15:54:00.000+08:00

The Register writes:

China has decided to ban foreign cartoons from primetime TV slots in an attempt to protect its indigenous animation industry, the BBC reports.

From 1 September, imports such as The Simpsons and Mickey Mouse will not be aired between 5pm and 8pm, a proscription which carries the added benefit of reducing local kids' exposure to the "effects of foreign culture".

The powers that be have already decided to clamp down on programmes using a mixture of animation and live action, which could hit the Teletubbies hard, the BBC notes.

The latest decision forms part of an ongoing battle to compete with extra-Chinese cartoons, notably those from Japan. In 2000, the Japanese invasion prompted an edict ordering broadcasters to "limit the use of foreign cartoons". Two years ago, the authorities further demanded that 60 per cent of animations shown at peak time had to be home-grown.

The problem for China's own cartoon industry is, as the Beeb explains, that it has yet to create noteworthy characters such as the infernal Disney mouse or Homer Simpson. Instead, it focuses on traditional product such as Journey to the West, following the adventures of the Monkey King.

Some Chinese commentators are, furthermore, sceptical that a ban will do anything to improve matters. The Southern Metropolis News offered: "This is a worrying, shortsighted policy and will not solve the fundamental problems in China's cartoon industry. The viewing masses, whether adults or children, will have no choice but to passively support Chinese products."

The Chinese authorities should also note that moving the Teletubbies to a post-watershed slot may do little to reduce the "effects of foreign culture". Younger readers may recall that UK clubbers - crazed on Ecstasy, and Vodka and Red Bull - developed a penchant for late-night Laa-Laa worship sessions which at one point, according to The Daily Mail, threatened the very fabric of UK society. ®

PS This might be a short-sighted policy for China's cartoon industry, but not the general one. Something to brood over for politicians in any country. And on another note, The Simpsons' sarcasm is not quite the kids' product... I feel more and more that we've got to include analysis of such artefacts in the textbooks on cultural studies rather than to have the unprepared tabula rasa'ed (esp. foreign) kids exposed to its caustic a-maze-ing twists))

2nd podcast

2006-12-02T01:26:00.000+08:00

Here is another video podcast of my students
Amazing that right after watching this podcast about our canteens one girl felt sick, and somebody said that was because she ate something at the canteen. Talk about coincicences.

Actually in reality it is not bad at all, I like eating in those canteens, some things are actually very tasty. And as the creators said themselves, it was more of a challenge to creativity rather then a precise reflection of the real state of affairs.

My students' podcast

2006-11-29T23:18:00.000+08:00

Hooray! It happened. For a long time I have been encouraging my students to steer their young energy into some creative field. As a task for my verbal communication class the students of the Translation and Interpreting School had to prepare podcasts, improving their speaking skills and seeing for themselves what they can do if they really apply themselves, not only speaking about (let's admit it) oftentimes fake topics in class reports, but leaving a more tangible trace, something others will appreciate, something less volatile than just a word breathed out. Here is the first video (!) podcast they made, and I am so happy for them I cannot keep away from sharing it with the world)) It is a trifle edited from the original version to protect some sensitive information like the phone number of the stars (who's interested may contact me and we will think whether to give you the number or not:)

Burden of the years

2006-11-08T18:49:00.000+08:00

Had listening training with the students and there was a mentioning of an LP record. Half-jokingly I decided to explain the concept to them, asking who knew what an LP is, and suddenly my playful mood churned into a chilly deafeningly silent emptyness when _NO_BODY_ could say what it was - the closest we got to was an audio tape. I mean, man, it was just about yesterday, I can still actually feel the sensation of holding a vinyl disc and dusting it off carefully with a special felt brush... Where is it all going to? When did it go? I am not terribly old, I remember, I re-live, I feel, I can breathe of how cool it was to get a new LP and how hip it was to put it on; and the hands remember the sacred sequence of movements when you raise the cover, unite the male power of the machine with the prone femininity of a record, give it a brisk turn with a finger, turn on the switch releasing the ever-present circular motion the turntable had always been pregnant with, feeling how the intensity of the power translates through the fingers into your whole body in anticipation of those a little cracky waves and streams and soundfalls of energy, and raise the needled spear from its cradle, gently lowering it onto the running magic burrows... What, nobody experiences it anymore - not even in the dusty nooks of the memory? Of the tales from the past? Of a not-so-far-away past, - for I still can call up those emotions of mine that the vinyl witnessed, they are still sparkling with the dew of actuality, which dried up a trifle, but is still humid to the touch of the soul.
One girl said she had never in her life seen or touched a vinyl disc. Another one had a flash or recognition from a movie. I mean, wait a second, I see them as more or less _my_ crowd, I am still in the same league with them if you know what I mean, - but how different our sensations of the world are, the memory lanes on the maps of our lives are not merging. And for them the buildings of consequences and understanding erected on our lanes may be walked in but can hardly ever become having been lived in. And then I felt that we are strangers to them. To a certain degree.

Alpha delta bravo

2006-11-06T23:26:00.000+08:00

My translation department students are having their monthy tests. As usual with the majority of the Chinese tests multiple choice is the favorite. I have to grade 50+50 papers with tons of questions and boringly limited room for imagination, only four letters of the alphabet thrown about and an answersheet to consult... The mind goes dull after paper number 3. Mistakes are of course avoidable - with great strain - but with the eyes jumping from the answer sheet to the students' papers and back it is such an excruciating job.

I wish somebody were here to read the answers to me so that I at least didn't have to look away from the test paper.... Eureka! I am my own reader! Here we go - record the answers to the computer's hard drive and play them as we check the papers!

But after a while it's getting dull again and I have doubts as to whether it was a "D" or a "B" just now, and the recording goes on, and I lose the tempo... I gotta do something or else...

The human genius did not stand by leisurely, and technically speaking for any cunning nut we can invent a big screw with a tricky threading :) What people do in such situations so as not to confuse short sound-waves? Right! Military phonetic alphabet! And a couple of minutes later from my open window and into the warm subtropical evening there drifted short Morse-code-like sentences "bravo - delta - delta - alpha - bravo - charlie...". The work went faster and my mind had some room for unrelated thoughts, - something like what if someone overhears me, and draws a long-fetched conclusion of me sending a coded message out. Darn! And I am just checking papers.

'Bravo-charlie-alpha-delta..." streamed away for about an hour. I was just checking the tests...

Psycho-Liguntiscial

2006-11-02T21:16:00.000+08:00

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetant tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wihtuot it bnieg a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig, huh?

Just to make you smile - Steffi

2006-11-02T12:20:00.000+08:00

"What have you done at home for my today's class?" -

2006-10-31T13:56:00.000+08:00

- asked I of my students the other day. Amid the soft tension of the blank stares a girl in the front row uttered:
"I was eating healthy food and sleeping well".
How more conscientious a student can a teacher wish for?

Meeting with those who made history

2006-10-26T22:03:00.000+08:00

Just last month in my presentation to the staff of our School of Translation and Interpreting at Sun Yatsen University I quoted Danica Seleskovitch (to the raised brows of the teachers present), and today out of the blue our school is honored by a visit from her colleague, Marianne Lederer.
Marianne worked at Paris École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs which is one of the best schools of interpreting, she was a conference interpreter and as I gathered is retired now. She wrote such books as Translation: the Interpretive Model and A Systematic Approach to Teaching Interpretation (the latter in cooperation with Danica Seleskovitch). She didn't bring any of those to sell, and I haven't even gotten a free-bee of the few ones she had on her...Marianne had participated in the Beijing conference on Interpreting and Translation (our Chair-lady went there of course, and I didn't:) and paid a visit south to give a lecture to the future interpreters of Canton.
She immediately recognized the Moscow State Linguistic University dubbing it in her warbly French accent the Maurice Thorez school, which swooshed my memory back to the bitter-sweet years of swimming in the sea of linguistics in general and interpreting in particular. And overall, it was a nice meeting, Marianne held herself with that old-school dignity and the years of simultaneous interpreting were hardly traceable in her...

Where can I get more?

2006-10-12T20:10:00.000+08:00

A billboard on our campus. I am wondering where that place to join them is.

Meet the parents

2006-10-09T11:22:00.000+08:00

"Владимир Путин празднует в субботу 54-й день рождения. <...>
В Москве, тем временем, в субботу отрывается выставка «Дети рисуют Путина». <...> В программе выставки: знакомство с родителями Кони, любимой собаки Путина, — лабрадорами Хенриетой Бош и Алькором Рос Брэдфордом, дегустация любимых блюд и напитков Путина. Похожие акции проходят и в других городах страны."

"Vladimir Putin is celebrating his 54th birthday. <...> Moscow in the meantime will see the launch of an art exhibition "Children draw Putin". <...> The exhibition will also house such events as acquiantance with the parents of Koni - Putin's pet dog, - Labradors Henrietta Bosch and Alcome Ros Bradford, gustation of Putin's favourite dishes and drinks. Similar events will take place in other cities throughout the country".

It's quite interesting which other animals the curious population will make acquiantance with in other cities.
"How did you feel when you were bearing the President's pet-to-be?" - [amalgamating pride and awe]: "Woof, grrr, wooff".
"And this pigeon once flew over Mr.P's head". - "Nice to make your acquaintance" - "Ooorhh".

..." And today for the show-and-tell - little Nicky with 'I touched Putin's dog's parents'. You can touch little Nicky after the class".

Taking the opportunity I'd like to include the information that in its time shook my understanding of the world - my friends in Russia did not even hear about this yet another child-loving act of Mr.P. You can see the curious PR-act here

Jackie IS the man!

2006-10-06T03:18:00.000+08:00

The balls he got:)
Big Brother (his moniker in HK) is burning the night from both ends to loosely use the saying.
In July, a drunken master Chan climbed onstage during a Hong Kong concert by Taiwanese singer Jonathan Lee and demanded a duet... I am just curious what he felt later on... Doing such things requires a certain change of mind,.. FUN TIME!

Later on:

CHAN URGES FOREIGNERS TO MARRY CHINESE WOMEN

2006-10-06T02:48:00.000+08:00

A chaser for the previous post - I guess it will be interesting

Martial artist and actor Jackie Chan is urging western men to marry Shanghai women, to help spread Chinese culture and language around the world.

The RUSH HOUR star is disgusted by the global ignorance surrounding Asian issues, but hopes his campaign to lobby foreigners to wed Chinese women will improve the situation.

He says, "We can encourage more foreigners to marry Shanghai ladies so their children will be able to speak Chinese.

"It will help spread Chinese culture far and wide,"

Chan is also fighting for Chinese-style sesame seed cake shops and teahouses to open next to McDonald's fast food restaurants and Starbucks coffee houses, to educate people about Asian food and drink.

I am not sure if it is wise to marry Shanghai women, they are reportedly very authoritative and demanding, so that the whole drive smells of the wish to push the Shanghainese ladies away onto the foreigners :) On the other hand with the men-women ratio in China not in favor of the former, it may be not a politically supported decision. Chan, for one, being a foreign citizen is also married to a Taiwanese woman.

Fang Shilong is da man

2006-10-05T20:06:00.001+08:00

Nothing human is strange to them.
Even princesses fart.
Jacky our Chan revealed another facet of his outstanding life.

"Kung Fu film star Jackie Chan Monday admitted that he acted in a porn movie 31 years ago, responding to a report revealed by Hong Kong media, Information Times reported Tuesday.

"I had to do anything I could to make a living 31 years ago, but I don't think it's a big deal, even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in his movies," Chan said. "The porn movie at that time was more conservative than the current films," he said.

Hong Kong netizens tipped local media that Chan was in the porn movie "All in the Family" (Hua fei man cheng chun ) in 1975, with a porn movie star who was famous at that time.

The Hong Kong made movie, directed by Zhu Mu, was defined as a comedy. A family gathers to be with its dying father. The reunion brings to the surface old rivalries.
Dean Shek, Tien Chun, and Sammo Hung were also co-stars.

This movie features the first and (so far) only sex scene in which 'Jackie Chan' has done on film. This is also the only movie he has ever done in which there wasn't a single fight or stunt sequence."

(Asianfanatics.net and this site)

Why all this tabloidness on my blog? I was and am a fan of old Jackie (52 years old) aka Chan Kong Sang aka Chen Gang Sheng (陳港生) aka Seng Long (成龍) aka Cheng Long (成龙) aka Yuen Lo aka Sing Lung aka Pao Pao, who has recently found out his other name - Fang Shilong (房士龍). Turned out his father (Fang Daolong) was a spy and a customs officer and many other things in the Mainland at the turmoiling times of 1930-40s, his mother (Lee Lee) a gambler and an opium smuggler, called 'the Third Sister' in the underworld of Shanghai. Jackie's father had caught his wife-to-be red-handed but let her go, later marrying her. Here's a human touch. But they both left behind on the mainland 2 kids each, fleeing to Hong Kong after the Communists took power. Here's a human tragedy. "It was so commonplace in China. Life was cheap. It has always been cheap. It's a very common thing to do, abandon your children. In every family, there were abandoned children" - says Mabel Cheung, the director of a recent movie "Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family" ("Longde Shenchu: Shiluode Pin Tu") and many Chinese might agree to this. Here's your West meets East. Here's your wonder and not judge - at least as I see it. Not that these people wanted to gamble or smuggle opium, - but wanted to survive.Jackie as a graduate of Peking Opera school in HK met some underworld characters, gambled and reportedly dealt in drugs, but ain't it another human touch to see a human behind the glamour of the ageing superstar? His dad - experienced in Chinese dark customs - hinted that his son had to stay away from Triads and drugs - a sound advice for the real world. And how about the story that Chan has an illegitimate daughter from a HK starlet with a beautiful name Elaine Ng Yi-Lei. And a legit wife (Lin Feng Jiao) and a son. Here's the trial of stardom and manhood. Here are the private emotions and decisions as private as that. Here's the value of one's own life. It's interesting for the guy to live, you can't take it from him. But it's also pretty difficult. In projection to your own life, makes you think. About him as nothing out of the ordinary, - ordinary sweat and blood of his stunts, ordinary perseverance, ordinary responses to ordinary human feelings, ordinary sins and ordinary punishments for those. And makes you think about yourself and your choices and your decisions.

Anyhow, I like the dude. Flesh and blood and rewards for everything. Those who can hear let them hear. A literally outstanding example.

For those learning Chinese - here's the site with Jackie Chan's songs - lyrics and sound, good for learning with a star-sparkled twist. Or - for me it's a more luring way to study Chinese, maybe because he's a memory of an endless childhood o'mine, in synch with his vivacious acting impressed for-almost-ever on celluloid two decades ago. He is pretty prolific, old chap. I counted 28 music albums.

A Shoe from ... Capt'n Sparrow!

2006-10-05T14:57:00.003+08:00

Amazing treats the Hainan shore revealed - we had a glance at it in passing but I bet it makes you imagine how this concoction from time to time slowly crawls across the beach minding its own marine business...

Pandas have thick skin - empirical data

2006-09-22T21:19:00.000+08:00

BEIJING - A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal's back, state media said Wednesday.
Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.
"He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand," and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.
The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.
"I bit the fellow in the back," Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "Its skin was quite thick."
Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.
Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.
The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and "they seemed to get along well with people."

"No one ever said they would bite people," Zhang said. "I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don't remember much."
Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was "healthy."
"We're not considering punishing him now," Ye said in a telephone interview. "He's suffered quite a bit of shock."

1492

2006-09-17T21:17:00.000+08:00

I am teaching some glimpses of American history in my listening class, and in the search found this. I guess it is a nice edge to the historical understanding. Not that all of my students will care anyway.
But to say the least, pretty witty.

The university

2006-09-16T17:45:00.000+08:00

My second week - almost third - at ZhongShan (aka Sun Yatsen) University. The campus is quite nice, with mountains on the one side and the (unfortunately unswimmable) sea on the other. These weeks have been marked my unusually cold weather and constant rains. But as the nature does not have its weather in vain, I also endeavor to find the beauty (which is to tell the truth is in your eye).

First year sudents (fresh-men as well as fresh-gals) ought to undergo military training. It lasts a month and lets the kids skip all academic activities. 7 days a week they march around the campus, singing songs and counting to 4. They start at 5-30 under my windows and begin counting aloud, apparantly it's the department of accounting, and they are revising the most vital professional skills. Probably at the end of the training the loudest mouth will receive a prize becuase they do not spare their vocal cords and the first morning's "1-2-3-4" literally jerked me out of bed; with the open window, the morning still and echo it was not that hard to invision that all this crowd was actually placed in my room.

Rules of chopstick etiquette

2006-09-16T17:36:00.000+08:00

Rule No.3 (borrowed from the wide prairies of the WWW*)
* click everything that clicks

Fall semester

2006-09-13T21:39:00.000+08:00

Here I go again.
Changed the school, leaving the Quanzhou Normal University (and here), which was (and still hopefully is) situated on the outskirts of the ancient city of Quanzhou - where the maritime Silk Way embarked on its journey to the west, and where Marco Polo reportedly stepped ashore in his discoveries of China - the picture below reveals a part of the historical monument commemorating the ground-breaking commercial act of selling a gourd to a big-nosed laowai
And moved to the south-west - Guandong Province, Zhuhai city - that's right on the border with Macao. The school is more or less ok, the name is Sun Yat Sen University. I am getting accustomed to the new rules, which are way more demanding. It's the Translation and Interpretation Department, which lured me in there in the first place.
The Muse is not going to visit me any time soon it seems, so instead of my usual florid garrulity I may offer some visual impressions of my first weeks in China after the trip to Russia.

This is the administrative building of the Sun Yat Sen University (Zhuhai campus) - especially noteworthy is the skyward staircase between the buildings which took my breath away the moment I stepped on campus.

Most of my travels around South China I made on a sleeper bus - overnight journeys shared with many a friend of mine - and I finally captured the image of a shabby one at the Zhuhai bus station. I gather a double-decker might have been more suitable for the agenda. But so far we are cramming it on a compact basis.

An amazing design of a tap without knobs the likes of which I have never seen anywhere - at a friend's kitchen. Start it up by turning it over the sink. Intriguing technologies

Another thing that kept me amazed and not bored this week is the French supermarket Carrefour with helpful posters written in French, no less. We checked at that counter, they gave us nothing.

And here I am taking a break from the demanding task of enlightening future translators and interpreters. The fat bastard that I am. Chinese food and starry nights with the device featured at the bottom of the picture make the mind wander off from the necessities of getting a grip on my-self and squeezing the same hedonistic self into the Spartan life style.

A session in Russian linguistics. Hui Zu

2006-06-29T18:53:00.000+08:00

Ели вот с Гао Сианг в маленьком ресторанчике в Цюанжоу – вчера и сегодня. Год с гаком назад меня туда Бай Бай водила – рекомендовала как оччень замурчательное место. И сейчас поели неплохо, лаобан очень милый с виду человек, общается, руки на пузике держит, улыбается, подкалывает и, в общем, очень приветливый лаобан. И, главное, не дорого совсем. Очень демократичное место .

Оказывается, это не просто китайская чифанька – а специфическое место, готовят там еду особой народности с севера Китая. Ну, и сами они, стало быть, оттуда. Называется народность «Hui». А я как раз два года назад работал в городке в тридцати минутах езды отсюда – ХуйАнь называется – но то другой хуй. Но все равно всколыхнуло. Сижу я значится, ем макароны с пивом, за ушами трещит, ибо болят у меня чего-то сейчас ухи от того, что переплавал в бассейне и того, что лазили туда доктора и я всем чем ни поподя. Но все равно сосредоточенно жую, ловко подхватывая палочками-близнецами наструганные макаронины и куски мяса, мастерски выхватая картофельные лапшинки из горшочка Гао Сианг, и попивая пиво. Кстати, пиво не из ХуйАня я на этот раз взял – моего любимого хуйаньского a la Corona не было – а был выбор между хуйаньским простым и Сюйдзинем – выбрал последний, ибо пока был в Хуйане выпил много местного – бутылок сдал в конце аж на 20 юаней. По 2 мао за бутылку, что ли.

При этом я все это время стараюсь есть и, получив информацию о народности, которая нас кормит всякими вкуснатищами, думаю думу про то, как бы покраше назвать эту кухню. «Народность Хой», - замена буквы «у» на «о» - не проканала, как-то очень стыдливо, это так на картах наших пишут. ХуйАнь в одной карте Хойанем назвали. Какой же это Хойань, если самый что ни на есть Хуйань? Чего нам «Хуй» скрывать. Вот и решил, как лингвист, совершить акт создания неологизма (акт неологизмо-созидания? Нео-созидания? Матрица какая то..) и выдать название для кухни.

"Хуевой" нельзя назвать. Вкусно готовят. Мы вчера, когда ели, рядом брат с сестрой сидели, так они, наевшись, заказали еще одну порцию, потому что очень вкусно было. А погоды нонича жаркие стоят, так братец, навернув горшочек с лапшичкой, с бусинками пота на сосредоточенном высоком лбе, в мечтах еще об одной порции, ходил все к вентилятору охладиться, пока несли ему добавки. Вот как вкусно там.

"ХУевая"? Ударение не все могут верно проставить.

"Охуительная", может? Ну, тут прямая реклама, надо показать не оценочную, а как раз наоборот, географически-культорологическую сторону дела.

"Хуйственная". Поэтично. Недурственно, но все равно перфекционист во мне не спокоен. Да и приставка «моно-» и ее менее утонченный брат «одно-» начинают маячить на горизонте. А это не придаст кухне красы, скорее, наоборот, указывает на монотонность и пресность, что не есть правда жизни.

"Хуенистическая"? Как-то по-книжному, не находите?

Просто может, «хуй-кухня» и ее «хуй-лапша»? Как товарный знак? Попахивает калькированием. Просится что-то чуть более утонченное.

Вот мне тут подсказывают "хуиная" - но это очень как то физиологически прямолинейно и немногозначно. Нет перелива тонкой коннатации. Да и не гонят тут из этого лапшу. Дорого такая лапша станет. Вон недавно в ресторане пекинской кухни жаркое бычье из этого дела по 100 юаней шло. Правда, гонят напитки из оленя - мы в свое время в Ляньюнгане пили тройную настойку на оленьих.

Как у нас прилагательные вообще образуются от имен собственных? Шанхай. Шанхайский. Хань - ханьский.

Хуйский. Да. Сурово и со вкусом. Хуйская кухня. Chinese – Shanghainese – Huinese. А?

ТУЦЫ (NEWS)

2006-06-19T00:15:00.000+08:00

What bugs me these days. Well, my house pets - lizarsds and ants are pretty firendly, my girlfriend checks my hunter's impulses to nail them down by words of widoms, saying they are all my friends. Lizards are funny, they are sliding around on the slick floor tiles, trying to run away from me, and are generally very amicable, they are not bothering me, and I try not to as well. And they hunt mosquitoes - reportedly - so they ARE friends.

Oh, yeah, in winter I saw from time to time a 3-inch spider, he is a friend too, according to my gf, so I didn't hunt it. I don't see it any more though.

Mosquitoes are omnipresent, especially this tropical summer. They surprised me a lot when in winter - in our non-heated apartments, when I could see my breath and was dressing in a feather-stuffed overcoat - the mosquitoes were still buzzing around, as frisk as ever, the natural selection giving them a lot of power... - bugger!

Ants are little fellas - if I drop a tiny morsel of food, mango or anything - they start running and swarming around it until it's gone. Helped us clean the shell of a crab Vadim and his wife planned to take as a trophy from a restaurant - there was still a lot of unreachable meat inside, those lil' helpers did the job alright. I think they didn't bring the shell back home as a whole, but that's irrelevant now : ) Anyhow, those home pets started to get bored without useful jobs, so they are attacking my sugar bowl now (more of a sugar box with a lid) - and I keep finding a couple of them in my sugar all the time while I am trying to sweeten up my tea. I take them out with spoonfulls of sugar and throw away (such a waste, but pretty fast), but I still find those little buddies swimming the tea after I stir my tasty mix - the special meat broth may be nourishing, though not as aesthetically comely. How to keep them out of my sugar? Or should I even bother?

Another thing - my beer bottles - are growing in number like fungus.

It looked like that in October 2005 - when a buddy of mine visited me from Lianyungang

-->

What it looks now - I have to carefully grope around through the kitchen - a night trip to the fridge is a potential music event. Each new bottle is a small challenge to my interior design-self

I am planning to get myself a pretty sum of money for my collection, since the idea of utilizing the bottles

sucks for the reason of it uselessness. A trip to the below-shown office is not too bright an idea, with all those 200+/- bottles, and the closest place like that being maybe 10 kilometers away from campus... So does anyone need a collection of high-quality glass containers, very useful in household, may be utilized as vases for beautiful flowers (I actually did a stunning floor design of dry reed emsamble housed in beer bottles back when I lived in Hui'An)? Or very soon I might hunt down that garbage guy who from time to time passes our building...
___________________
Disclaimer. The last two pics are taken somewhere from the internet, no claim of copyright on them from my side...

Typhoon watch

2006-05-17T13:48:00.000+08:00

We had a typhoon today. It even has a name. Which I forgot the minute I took my eyes off its onscreen written representation. But it was very Chinese sounding and foreboding. Originated somewhere in the Philippines. The school has issued a warning, cancelled classes (today was my day off anyway)), and the students lined up in the campus store from the back wall to the registers getting whole baskets full of crackers and canned stuff. Probably they were expecting to be sealed up in the dorms for a couple of days. The store must have made a fortune that day. The online paper said thousands were evacuated from Guangdong and Fujian (that's me!) provinces' coastal areas (that's me again!) - a fun read when the typhoon is coming, you are sitting right on the coast, and the paper says people are being evacuated. Ho.

The night was pretty aggressive. The rain was jumping right at the window panes, the wind was howling ominously, and the sky was overcast in that weird way when through the rushing dark-silver clouds you could see some volatile patches of the clear sky, but those patches didn't look at all friendly, - they were more like clear icy-blue steel blades, rather than welcoming starry heavens. Birds were fighting with the air currents energetically navigating along the broken routes with their touseled feathers, calling up in memory the name of Jonothan Livingston. A slight crack in the balcony door blew the curtains up to the ceiling with a sinister hiss. The kitchen cooker hood which is leaning against the window in my kitchen with its iron bars (a strange design I agree), was jittering and groaning with every gust of wind that knocked on the window, threatening to tumble onto my woks and pans. A Philippino teacher raced on his bike off campus when everybody was rushing under the protection of their houses, and to my joking ain't you afraid, he just moved a brow with a 'huh!'. I guess if the typhoon is coming from the Philippines the Philippinos are immune : )

Anyhow, why I am writing all this. I received a telephone message from a former student of mine that read:

Attention please! Typhoon is coming. Store enough food for yourself!

What a nice girl, thought I. And thanked her. In reply I got this:

You are welcome! Staying at your room all day is safe for us!

Now I am thinking what this last phrase really has in its semanix. Doh: )
Did I miss on the whole bunch of scared and shivering girls who wanted to come into the safe haven of my room for protection? Or was it a kind reminder for me not to stick my nose out and let them for once feel comfy even though on the typhooned streets?

Off-line vs. On-line reality

2006-05-10T16:05:00.000+08:00

Huh! So much time has passed since the last post... But it doesn't feel this way, so everything is fine I guess, 'coz if life in the reality is eventful, who cares about its online reflection :)

Anyhow - my Hainan saga has not been written yet, with only one post hanging out there somewhere, but I am already up and kicking to share the tidbits of my new adventure - a trip to Guilin and Yunnan.

The May holidays turned out longer than I had expected - so I did this dream tour from

Guilin to

Yangshuo by boat on

Lijiang River to

Kumning and

Stone Forest (Shi Lin) to

Lijiang to

Shangri-la to

Tiger Leaping Gorge to

Dali

and back to Quanzhou several hours before I had to turn up in the classroom. 459 photos were brought back, tons of knick-knacks I am not sure what to do with now that I am sober from all the excitement, but I can say I was in the official Shangri-la. Lalala. And patted a live tiger on the nape of the neck. The fur is not as coarse as I'd expected, something like the back of an Airdale.

Stay tuned for more.

A teacher's reward

2006-03-07T19:59:00.000+08:00

I had a student last year. Charles. Actually for the whole two last semesters, going on the third now. A slacker as he was, something has clicked and he started coming up to me after classes with some real cool profound questions about the style and figures of speech, actually everything was to the point. And earlier this semester I stumbled on a graffiti on a class wall.

He dared sign it. The vanity of an author : )

This writing on a wall has been sitting there for the whole three months now, with nobody caring, but that's not the point. The guy has actually connected to the beauty of the language. Before he had been totally strange to the studies and all, but seeing this rhymed inscription I felt a pang of pride topped with an oblique mischievous smile. We had our hard times with me ordering him to do the homework no matter what, and him throwing a fit or two because he thought it unnecessary to study, but here we go. A proof the beauty of the language has gotten to him. The teacher of creative writing can reap now. I am happy they do not clean the wall. I enjoy reading this little poem every once in a while.

*
"Hate me. Kiss me. in hip.
Love me. Kiss me. in lip."
For the absence of the necessary building blocks he (as I had taught them) tried to use the lexical units at hand. “Hip” actually means what you thought. Now the poem takes on a sort of a philosophical spin with a tinge of some personal tragedy.

Artificial languages and language groups

2006-03-03T23:45:00.000+08:00

The whole last week I was pursuing my little moonlighting affair, translating a loooong DVD player manual. Added to the university, sports, and extracurricular stuff at the uni, it took all my days and most of the nights, spiced up only by Dan Brown's first book (was terribly hard to put it down, so I had to read it on the run). I have just finished the translation and in the way of making up for the week of silence about my thrilling trip to Hainan here are some samples from the original of my translation. Red-hot right from the stove.

It did puzzle me at first and my linguistic guts were about to object:

But then I thought better of it. I guess it just lists the languages in a batch of programmed language sets, so English is sort of a default one everywhere. But anyhow, looks funny under that group name.

The next list is that of the languages available (possibly) on DVD discs as subtitles and audio tracks, and their abbreviations. Isn't it strange that there's an entry under the abbreviation of "VO"?

Well, I guess it's possible that there are still people around the globe who do speak Schleyer's Volapük, invented at the end of the 19th century. And even watch movies dubbed in it.

Wondrous art thy works, oh nature's wonder, a creator of hi-tech linguistic contents. I am simply curious if there is a practical justification for this.

Predicaments of pix-addiction

2006-02-20T18:36:00.000+08:00

As the result of my own thoughtless actions all pictures of Hainan happened to be treacherously and foolishly deleted from my computer (if it's any comfort for those who didn't lose faith in my mental adequacy, I may say that it all happened deep into the night, as the last act of my fogged mind), thus making me now apply some extra strenuous efforts in the ungrateful task of getting them back from some third-party sources. The irreplaceables by default fully correspond to their name, but there are still some good ones left - waiting to be uploaded for your entertainment.

This unfortunate event didn't prevent me though from contemplating a possibility that the Higher Powers - with the best of intentions - chose to bereave me of some unnecessary pictures, and for that I cannot but be simply grateful because all's for the better and I was really getting too obsessed with those images, thinking of how I'd post them and what I'd write on them... You know, the Hainan experience was in itself a pretty nice gift bestowed upon the bleak days of my routine-clad life to be veiled by some pixelled images : )) Makes you wanna value life for what it is and not the reflections of life, doesn't it?

And as a sign of the white stripe on that zebra'ed hide of life here's one visual treat from our trip - a lion dance we witnessed in Haikou. Imagining the deafening pulsation of the cymbals riding on the rhythmical throbbing of the big drum (partly seen on the left) might create the lacking audio stream a picture cannot provide. I enjoyed the performance (given apparently to some bosses of the Haikou Hotel seen in the background),

as much as I enjoyed brief talks with the members of the Haikou city kung-fu club who actually put the lion dance up, especially the daughter of the Teacher, who - after the necessary timidity ritual of giggling and "I'm not worthy" rolling of the eyes - gladly showed me what she's all about (martial-art-wise).

The acme of the whole dance dealie was the lion snatching the cabbage head dangling from a string of firecrackers, which was in its turn held by a hotel bellboy precariously balancing on the edge of the glass roof, the lion all this time mincing on a wattled shield which rested on the shoulders of the four happy performers, who used that time to smoke, crack jokes and quench their thirst. A happy end ensued, the lion's trap devoured the cabbage, the 'lion-head' kung-fu master descended from the buckler, and the welcome silence of a moist morning city rushed upon us as the drum was carried away to the truck.

Where I have been all this Spring Festival time

2006-02-13T21:30:00.000+08:00

Haven't written for a while - about 3 weeks was it? - and it's all because I had finally made it to the Hainan island (海南 - something like a "marine south" I guess) - the southernmost part of China - an island which is the smallest province of the PRC.

I have just arrived back to my university - so strange, looks like I will have to actually do some work here - a totally strange idea after about a month in a parallel hair-downletting reality (yeah, was possible even with the cropped do of mine). I am gathering my thoughts, trying to embrace this new realization of the scheduled world, organizing the photos and brushing up the memories of the tropical coco-palm oasis.

In the meantime - to whet you appetite for the rampant views of Hainan - a beach at night -
imbued with the sound of the waves married with the rustling of the palm trees silhouetted against the star-sprinkled sky, the smell of the sea breeze which leaves a saline touch on the skin, the moon hanging in a very Chinese way crest-down... - I guess I'll sooner or later gotta weave my impressions into a more or less readable form, time allowing and God willing, so the stories are cooking : )

Gotcha, predator!

2006-01-20T15:06:00.000+08:00

We've bought a fresh squid in a supermarket recently - you know, from the squidgy bunch who were having a rest on a big pile of ice in the fish department. I am not a big food shopper or a successful chooser of fresh products, but turns out you gotta pick the fresh ones judging by their smell. Both rejected ones and the lucky selected one smelled kinda same to me, but again, who am I to judge.

The cool thing happened when we dissected him - in his belly there were three little fishes, in the state that lets me judge the predator was stopped in his rapacious seafaring tracks right after his lunch and put to cool it off on the heap of ice soon thereafter.
I had always (ignorantly as it turns out) thought squid are kind of vegetarians and eat plankton or something, and the predatory streaks in their behavior for some strange reason justified to me the purchase of the carnivorous beast even more. Anyhow, it was cooked, dressed, salted and devoured. Bon appetite to those about to feast on whatever's sent to you today :)Pic: The boiled creophagist clamped between a pair of chopsticks is about to be sliced up with my sparkling machete

Now how 'bout that!

2006-01-19T23:37:00.000+08:00

Heh, I rememer in that movie Private Parts about and with Howard Stern, he and his wife were in a Chinese restaurant, and a Chinese waiter comes up to him and says something like 'Don't make fun of the Chinese people, make funny' - I am surely not citing that right, but the whole idea appeals to me in the sense that it's not an evil laugh, just seeing funny things around me... Hey, I'll laugh at my own bloopers... (don't be too hard on me though;)
Anyhow, ain't you gonna be a bit suspicious when somebody grabs a cup out of this pack and offers you a drink? Happened to me. Weird feeling I tell ya) I mean, looking at the saliva coming out of the mouth of that hyped star-shaped dude on the package.

Pre-Spring Festival Update

2006-01-18T14:35:00.000+08:00

I am free as a wind. To the best of my abilities that is. The semester is finished. Almost the whole school moved to their hometowns to celebrate the Chinese New Year (The Spring Festival). The campus is unbelievably deserted and that is making me happy. Being a little sick I am staying home but plan to travel soon. Should be ashamed of myself getting up at 1PM, spending all the day in front of the computer, but feeling happy about that. Sweet doing nothing : )
What a beautiful afternoon that was today! Sunshine and warmth. Outside under the sun it is really warmer than inside.
My laundry drying out on the balcony was dry already this afternoon, but I decided to give it some more time. With the dusk, seeing the crawling fog form the sea I visited my laundry and found out it is all damp now. Oh well. All's for the better. Had to leave it 'drying out' again. You have to experience the ugliness of non-action first-hand to become a better person : )
But this period of inactivity gives me a chance to enrich my blog. I have tons of stories to tell from my past in China, and though they will not be in a 'diary-like' format, with the dates jumping like fawns on the forest hills, I will try to give an account of my experiences here, spiced up with a good measure of cultural shocks and smaller shocklets.

Story #1 - My trip to Shanghai for the Russian Orthodox Christmas.

Right from the Russian Consulate you can have this magnificent view of the Pudong District - with the signs indicating my former visits to Shanghai : )

In the afternoon I made a raid on the open-air market where I purchased a winter jacket and a backpack with wheels - my long-time dream.
I also witnessed a nice picture this country abounds in, and though to me now it is nothing but the routine, some of my friends over the oceans might find this amusing:
After the market I had a nice dinner in a restaurant named ''Little Country''. It is actually a high-class restaurant, not without a hue of 'cultural' quirks, and with an exquisite menu, full of that special Chinese flavor I like so much - seriously - both linguistically and gastronomically.

I am not making a joke here, that is a super tasty and cool place to have a meal in. It was a kind of a tourture (pleasant in a way as it was) trying to decide what I want to eat because my wolfy eyes were running insatiably through the countless lines of various delicacies, having a hard time hooking on to something because any next thing seemed to be way more appealing. They had a huge choice of 'hot pots' - mutton, rabbit, 'deer'... At first I wanted to try the rabbit hot pot, but later thought it's more 'refined' to try venison. Turned out it's a huge serving unconquerable for one person, so the waiter talked me into having mutton.
A funny cultural thing I want to mention here is that when the xiaojie (小姐- waitress) was bringing me the venison, her thumb touched a piece of heavily gravied meat - openly and loudly with no way for me NOT to see it, - and her behavior was something I often see in this country - every time with changing feelings (from anger on my earlier stages here to now smile) - the naive and sly method to squeeze through life. She stuck her thumb out, made a swoosh over the dishes, surreptitiously cleaned it on the table cloth under the table, and picked a pen form her apron - all this in one graceful motion - too transparent and at the same time ingenious. You know, with that childish air - ''no one saw, I hardly saw myself so it kinda not happened''.

Other things that caught my attention on that trip are:

A self-sufficient guy in the Shanghai subway, who turned heads and drew smiles form the Shanghainese who are apparently not too much surprised at many weird things - entered a car, unfolded a chair and fell asleep right there. A pretty clever move, carrying a folding chair around, remembering how people here rush and push trying to run into the train first and take a seat.

A pedestrian crossing near the Shanghai Railway Station - there are traffic light there, but the crowd too eager to cross the street no matter which light is on required mentors who herded them - a not infrequent picture at crossings here. This I see in many cities, looks like the people here live in another dimension, not respecting rules and regulations, even though physically living in the world where the tangible artifacts of those regulations exist - in the form of meaningless decorations like the traffic lights and road markings. But the traffic workers near the Train Station took a more drastic step and implemented a useful tool - a long cord with red flags on it to pen off the pushing crowd of newly arrived indigenous folks fresh off a train. They unraveled it with the red light and coiled it up when the green came back on. You gotta do what you gotta do. (It's not very clear in the picture but you can still see the line if you look real close - sorry had no chance to have another go at the paparazzi thing).

The night was spent in a sauna which is a special topic altogether, with massage and shower and hot rooms and swimming pools - sorry there are no snapshots of the interior, but that's what the hall looks like

This thing is really big here, it's like a family outing - kids walking with mothers in those little pajamas, and rooms where they can play...
And this is the facade.

On the way to the sauna I couldn't help stealing the snapshots of Shanghai's urban beauty and here are the night views.

My dogs are kickin' ... ass! Or tap-dancing on the stone floor

2006-01-05T02:54:00.000+08:00

Here's a message I received some time ago from a person in our University's Foreign Affairs Office.

----- Original Message -----
From: "...闽丽" <mailto:xxxxx@hotmail.com>
To: serge.gavenko @ mail.ru
Subject: A little noisy

> Hi sergy,
>
> I would like to tell you that the person who lives at your > downstairs, she said you walks
> all the time stepping hard. Is it possible for you walks
> quietly?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Regards,
>
> L<...>ly
>

I was flabbergasted and the deafening red heat of shame and new reality rushed up into my face... But then I smiled and let it go 'coz...

Now stop your caustic remarks about me eating too much and moving too little. "Yeah, yeah, Serge, that fat bastard, putting on weight like a hippo - now people have no choice but to complain about his fat @$$ to higher offices". Nothing of the kind. Yeah, I am stompin' and I am hompin'. But that's not the case. I need to tell ya my floor is made of stone - here in Fujian wood is expensive. And acoustic insulation is not that great. But the heroes of our todays's little story are right here -

I bought these little babies when traveling in Hainan - a beautiful island - Chinese Hawaii as it is called. I'd brought my cool wooden slippers back and tap-danced over the heads of my downstairs' neighbors - not being aware of this till that heart-breaking letter came around. Now I naturally respect the deserved rest of my neighbors and walk as loud as a mouse on a chilly night through a dark barn.

But what is interesting in this whole story - am I weird or something? - but I still think that a good neighbor could come up 20 stairs and talk rather than go all the way across the campus to the administrative building to complain. Duh, I looked like a shuffling unbearable bumpkin or something to these people. Hehe. I talked to the woman who lives 'at my downstairs' (like a good neighbor), and the answer was that 'since we had not been introduced (that's a proper high-class English society here) and it had not been a very big problem, so...' (she stopped at this 'so' probably meaning it's self-explanatory from here since it's quite natural to resolve these small household problems via the Foreign Affairs Office).

I am probably too hard on that lady anyhow, maybe I do look unapproachable and hard to deal with, or it's not easy for some people to deal with new folks or ...whatever. Just a funny thing about my wooden slippers. Tapping on the hard stone floor. I had a healthy laugh. Hope you smiled too.

Во блин нафиг повезло

2006-01-05T02:06:00.000+08:00

About a Russian superstition, so I guess the cultural constants gotta stay within the framework of the corresponding signs. Just a fluttering of emotion, not a cultural linguistic analysis - so it's in Russian : )
Тока по-русски можно написать. Любят у нас тут в универе обрубать воду без предупреждения. На прошлой неделе вырубили, сегодня вот опять квечеру. Иду на вечерний урок/просмотр кинокартины в честь последнего занятия семестра - вода было. Иду обратно - у столовой стоит очередь девчонок с ведерками. Натренированное шестое чувство стало подсказывать, что пора чуять неладное. Да - так и есть - отключили, изверги. Как известно, иностранные шпециалисты живут в так называемой Секции "А" - это почитай 11 общаг и все для девичьего полу. Таким макаром, к единственно действующей точке подачи воды стремится поток особей женского пола с пустыми ведрами. Так вот пока я шел наперекор течению девиц, подумал - WTF, чего это такое то, напрягся весь как лампочка еликтричества. Пора бросать это пассивное верование в приметы (это типа «вроде не веришь, а вдруг») - надо переключаться на активное верование в то, что все это - пустые предрассудки. Нечего нервы портить. У нас 3 тысячи девок в ентой секции "А" проживает, нихрена себе заморочка - повстречать хотя бы часть с пустыми ведрами. А то видел, еще некоторые по два ведра несут. Несучки такие. : )

New Year Chinese-style on Xiamen's Gulangyu

2006-01-05T00:42:00.000+08:00

Gulangyu is an island near Xiamen (which in turn is a bigger island itself). It's a pretty cool little place, and every time I go there I discover something new - culture-wise and geography-wise. It looks like a little fairy-tale land, with narrow winding streets and remnants of European mansions - leftovers from the concession times. Not thinking too long about where to meet the dawn of the New Year, my friend and I decidedly mounted a bus and in 1.5 hours were in Amoy (another name for Xiamen),

then took a ferry to the Gulangyu island and there we were, looking for a nice hotel to house a small New Year party. After searching through the dark and beautiful streets of Gulangyu for an hour we stumbled upon a very nice place called The Bay View Inn (228RMB (US$28.5) per night - I very rarely pay THAT much for a hotel in China).
We had no view of the bay (neither did any other rooms) - hopefully the second and third floors which were under construction will provide the justification for this name. But our windows looked on a busy central street. Now - the beauty of the whole thing is that on Gulangyu any motor-driven vehicles are prohibited, so are bicycles - making this little central street a really nice venue.

The 31st of December we spent frolicking around malls and small shops, eating tasty things and buying take-outs for our New Year hotel party for two. Noteworthy are such events of the day as
- rush-stomping up a down-going escalator in a mall.

- a visit to a Jackie Chan store with unbelievably high prices - which undermined my good feelings towards the Australian star; we saw a t-shirt signed by him, and various clothes items with price tags featuring figures usually 10 times higher than those you find on similar quality/design items but with different brand names. I would have thought of buying something had he sewn it himself, but label-flashing is not for us, simple folks as we are.

(To tell the truth this very picture was taken about half a year ago, but also in Xiamen and near another Jacky Chan store - he got it pretty much covered around this part of the world.)

- eating unbelievably tasty noodles in a small restaurant. I made 4 trips to that place in 2 days because of the delicious stuff.

- waiting in another even smaller eatery while the cook was making our holiday noodles and veggies according to our several-times-changing order, and if he didn't have the ingredients his wife would rush out of the shop to buy things like mushrooms and cauliflower from a hawker, who was standing right outside for just the occasion with two enormous baskets and a shoulder-yoke.

The transformation of the calendar dates was greeted on a deserted beach/embankment under a huge tree, illuminated with stars and lights from distant streetlamps against the acoustic background of murmuring waves, every now and then splashing into the rocks. This unbearably romantic atmosphere was spiced up with the surprisingly-not-so-cold-for-the-time-of-year East China Sea itself, which whispered to me tenderly - Serge, Serge, come into me, meet the New Year within my welcoming waves... - the exhortations being cut abruptly and jealously by my companion. I guess that's simple because she can't swim, that's all. But romantic welcoming of the New Year did happen alright. I was even allowed to wet my feet in this alluring ocean's affiliate. Was pretty bearable. But not like in the summer, you know.

The walk back to the hotel was truly amazing. The empty streets were lighted magically, with little flags and Christmas lights over the crooked pavements, two-storeyed buildings from two centuries ago, toy houses with Christmas trees and real-size Santa Clauses, all created a feeling of something unreal and unbearably beautiful.

One half of us (and that was not me) dared to jump over the small fence of a toy composition "Santa and his snow-clad house" and amicably patted Santa on the shoulder like he was her old buddy. It didn't startle me much (but it did scare her of course) after Santa jerked and started moving his hips in a slow dance to the sweet Christmas song which reverberated with excellent acoustics through the cobble-stone streets, his beard and white hair swaying along with his movements. It was a fairy-tale feeling, as we walked away from the dancing Santa, the music imbuing through the deserted lane's windows. Luckily nobody shouted from them, and this only added up to the feeling of calm joy. It's funny though that we were about the only people who celebrated the beginning of the new year; for the majority of the Chinese it's not an event at all.

The first day of January was spent discovering new places on the island. We saw old mansions behind wrought gates, with turrets and even people living in some.

One even had something like a squash or a pumpkin precariously growing right above the gate.

We saw a film crew shooting a flick in one of the streets, we had even found a hotel where they all stayed, thus making it difficult for us a day before to find an accommodation. An interesting thing walking on Gulangyu - everywhere you can see dozens of cats walking on their own anywhere they like. Especially it's amazing in the night, when in every little lane you turn to, there is a cat looking at you. But the most interesting thing is that the majority of the cats we saw were white ones; the second place held purely black ones, and it was only about twice that we noticed 'normal' multi-colored common cats. Do they breed them on purpose or is it a natural taste of the felines for the likes of themselves, since they seem to be free as a wind on those streets?

White cats against a white wall. Almost after Polenov.

A cool case of the Chinese reality we present here - strange as it seems, there was a truck in one of the streets in Gulangyu - probably working graveyard shifts for locals away from central streets - the driver was having his feet-above-the-heart exercise sleeping in the daytime.

And it was a pretty hot New Year here in South China,

nothing like the last one:

So, Happy New Year everyone! Tell me how you celebrated.

Wishes from my Department

2005-12-25T15:05:00.000+08:00

That was quite an interesting holiday card all the foreign teachers received from the department. This inter-cultural and inter-religious fusion is sure something... Makes you stop in your tracks and contemplate, if nothing else. You know. Same roots, same origins. As seen by the Chinese beholder...

Makes me think how much I know about their culture. I am sure I might look funny or even something less adequate when trying to operate with Chinese cultural constants. Anyhow, just a thought and a remark.

Merry Holidays and Happy New Years

2005-12-24T20:41:00.000+08:00

Well well well
Yo ho ho

The holiday season is starting and I wish all those who are reading it - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The life has been hectic around here - and it is still like this. I have just finished the 4th issue of my newspaper - I am looking for ways to post it on the web; I had to make 3 variants of test papers, and I am still working on a huge moonlight translation job, and that's all intersprinkled with going to department lunches, cooking, reading, planning nearest future, building and supporting relationships - with virtually no time to have a healthy sleep - so I guess I am having unhealthy ones. a-hem. Not speaking of supporting a meaningful blog. So -->

Coming up - bloopers - with pictures
- travelogues
- fresh musique and movies
- martial arts sketches
- virtual tours of modest foreign specialists' apartments
- modest notes on tea-drinking
- kicking dogs
- stuff I will hopefully come up with later on.

Grand holidays and pleasant surprises to all!