I just watched Boris Johnson waffling on about the London Olympics, inspiring stuff from the likeable oaf!
“PING PONG IS COMING HOME!!!”
He’s got a good point, most of the international sports at the olympics were invented or codified in the UK, it’s just a shame that we’re crap at them all.
Anyway, Stoke won last weekend, it’s not all bad!
So it rained this morning, a lot. My boss tells me it was the heaviest rain for 100 years (which luckily only lasted an hour or so).
Anyway, we ended up sitting the storm out at home and leaving about 40 minutes later than normal, the traffic was really bad on the way in but we still got to the office in about 1hr 15mins (about double the normal time), nothing compared to the epic journey of one of my colleagues though:
He got picked up at his home in Pudong this morning at 7:40 am and only arrived in the office at around 1:20pm after spending almost six hours on the road, barely moving (his journey time is normally less than 1 hour).
Apparently he pays a taxi driver a fixed monthly fee to bring him to the office every day, so obviously getting out of the car, walking to the nearest metro station and spending 5 or 6 rmb (essentially paying twice for the same trip) taking the metro to the office was out of the question. I thought about asking him why but in the end I didn’t bother, as I’ve mentioned before, “why?” questions always end in frustration in China and should be avoided. at all costs!
So, I’m just about moved in now, well, when I say moved in I mean I’ve moved the boxes in and emptied them out onto every available surface but it will do for now.
I found a great property agent, Amanda from Crown Property (www.crownrealty.com.cn), normally the agent will find your property for you, get their commission and that’s the end of it but she really helped out, found me an ayi, booked the removals company for me, found packing boxes for me and brought them to my apartment, helped me pack, told me I was fat, cleaned my new apartment before I moved in, advised me to do some exercise, helped me to move, dealt with shanghai telecom to set up my internet connection, asked me if I was gay etc etc.. If anyone’s planning on moving soon I’d definitely recommend looking her up, great service.
Anyway, let’s get on with it, here’s some pics of the new place:
The kitchen - waiting for the ayi to come and sort it all out, I’ve cleared a path to the fridge for the beer to keep me afloat
The spare room, carnage, won’t be needing it until October though when my mum visits. Could do with finding the iron though, I’ve been wearing creased clothes all week.
The DingleSpeaks nerve centre, complete carnage. Full of essential man-crap though, broken obsolete computers, speakers (3 sets at the last count), huge bundles of power leads for devices I long since disposed of etc etc.
The master bedroom - ship shape and fully operational
The lounge - a free dinglespeaks.com email address to anyone who can guess which movie I was watching
The move was going well, I’d got loads unpacked and put away when disaster struck, my new TV / home theatre system / PS3 arrived, well, that put a full stop on the unpacking and it’s not really started again. Anyway, the weekend is here and I’m sure I’ll move it along a little.
Hmm, I’m meeting Swiss in about an hour, it’s not looking good, I can feel a “Professor Dingle Weekend Hangover Science Diet” weekend coming on…
It seems like ages since I posted anything and Swiss James has been begging me so here goes.
The main problem has been that I’m in the middle of moving apartment. I actually moved at the end of last week but it’s still chaos in my new place and I have no internet yet so it’s difficult to post anything.
Hopefully my internet connection should be up by Thursday and normal service will be resumed (take deep breaths in the meantime James).
Anyway, here’s a random photo of a painting in a restaurant I took last week when I was drunk, the painting was titled “Darth Vader bothering some swans on a farm”.
“PAH! Your puny wings are insignificant next to the power of the force!!”
You’re never short of something to blog of in Shanghai. Today I had nothing, so I popped my camera in my pocket when I went for lunch and sure enough, within about 2 minutes of leaving my apartment I spotted a splendid young chap wearing the finest pair of trousers I think I’ve ever seen.
If my uncle had been here he’d have said they were a pair of Rumpty Fizzers or maybe a pair of Bobby Dazzlers, mind you he’d probably have thought the guy was a Sugar Bertie and clipped me round the ear for wearing shorts that came to my knees.
Anyway, here’s some pictures, I guarantee this is the most feminine fabric you will ever see on a man..
She was already at the bar when we arrived, writing on her notepad and occasionally ripping pieces off and putting them into a bag.
We ordered our beer and wandered across, she’d volunteered at a local OAP home since our first year, she was to spend the day there at the weekend and was organising activities, “charades” she said. I offered to help and took a sheet of paper and a pen; “songs or movies” she said.
I wrote down three, tore them off and put them into the bag; “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and “Stairway to Heaven” came to me immediately, “Urotsukidoji; Legend of the Overfiend” took a few seconds longer, something to keep the old blighters on their toes.
The toilets in Japan are nothing short of amazing, heated toilet seats, inbuilt deodorisers, noise generators to disguise the fact that you are laying bum-spuds (something which shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to the casual observer who sees you going into a cubicle, whistling and carrying a newspaper) and a drinking fountain. Yes, you heard me right, a drinking fountain!
Robotoilet - Turn on, Tune in, Drop out
Basically, when a gentleman is going for a “standing evacuation” you press one of the buttons on the side on the control panel and with a mechanical whirr a pipe appears and delivers a jet of fresh water straight to your mouth. Well, except in my case it was poorly set and delivered the water directly onto my chest, fortunately I was naked (calm down girls) so no great disaster. I noticed a pressure adjuster and with a few clicks was able to lift the jet towards my thirsty mouth. It was a tad warm for my liking but I guess that’s how the locals like it
Toilet Drinking Fountain
One thing I found a bit odd is that the toilet seat has to be down for the fountain to work, normally when I’m standing I’ll put the seat up so I don’t sprinkle it, bit of a design flaw if you ask me..
I was talking to a girl in the bar last night about this miracle of Japanese engineering, she was equally impressed, she described it as “an eloquent display of gaijin barbarism”, I’m not really sure what she mean’t but I can tell she was impressed.
Other stuff:
Japanesish View from my Hotel Room
Don’t Ask, it’s Probably “Bad for the Health” or Something
So I’m in Japan right now, it’s a strange place to get used to after China, the streets are spotless, the people next to me on the train are having a whispered conversation which I wouldn’t know was happening if I couldn’t see their lips moving, people line up on the platform in neat lines and wait for everyone to exit before they enter the train one by one and men pay large amounts of money just to talk to women.
Something typically Japanese happening in Japan (Nagoya to be exact) last night
My Chinese colleague doesn’t like the place, “it is TOO clean” he says, “it is not personal”, he can only smoke in certain areas and has to put the butt in the street ashtrays, this is “very inconvenient”.
One thing I really like out here is the road works, outside our office in Japan they’re fitting out a coffee shop, everything is boarded up and does not impinge on the pavement but they still employ two guys to stand at either end of the boarded up building to apologise profusely about the inconvenience and advise on how to best proceed past the works.
Apologising profusely to someone exiting the building
“Almost safe now, just a few more steps sir, you’re doing REALLY well!!”
Next to the road, leaning on the bollards, you can see two red batons, they normally use these to wave at passers-by and indicate the correct path to take. Actually there is a small blade inside each of these, if a pedestrian is too inconvenienced by the roadworks both streetworkers commit immediate ritual suicide to restore face.
Tomorrow - Japanese toilets
UPDATE:
Sushi!!! HAI !!!!
Surely these just all rattle against each other every time there’s an earthquake?
Hermetically sealed building work
Note the amount of effort to completely seal the work from the street, even the most minor gap is sealed up with tape and the boards have been perfectly cut around the steps. It’s pretty much watertight, If they get a water leak in there all the staff are basically going to drown.
One of my colleagues once asked me if I was proud to be British
“Yes, of course” I replied, “are you proud to be Chinese?”
“Yes” he said, “why are you proud to be British?”
“I’m not sure” I said, “why are you proud to be Chinese?”
“Because we have the atom bomb”
So there’s this bar on Julu Lu called Dan’s Old Farmhouse and they have this homebrew concoction called Black Pig. I have no idea what’s in it, it tastes a bit like liquorice mixed with petrol, but it does you proper fine and dandy.
This week one of my good friends (who doesn’t like to be named on the internet but let’s call him John for the sake of argument) agreed to demonstrate the potency of this brew, see the evidence below:
Several Black Pigs:
The normal, shy disposition has disappeared, bongo playing proficiency increased 100 fold, mouth permanently open ready for more Black Pig. You can also observe the effects on Swiss James in the video at around the 46 second mark, drooling like a baby.
A couple more:
Coherency still good, now moved on to playing air guitar and hurling abuse at the bar staff for playing the wrong music.
A couple more
Yeah, that’ll do it.