Dingle Speaks

I don’t have much to blog about right now, I’m up in Beijing attending an exhibition and apart from meeting a chap called Wellington and reading that there would be a display of “bamboo flute blowing to make the phoenix coming” there has been nothing remotely bloggable (and let’s face it the above are barely worthy of mention).

Anyway, I took a taxi in Beijing yesterday and it had this fancy gadget the likes of which I’ve never seen in Shanghai, have a look at this, it’s a right rumpty fizzer (or maybe a bobby dazzler):

It’s a sun visor / tv screen / dvd player, all in one, it’s probably got a few more gadgets but I didn’t dare ask seeing as I was being thrown about the back of the taxi like a errrrrrr… throwy around thing…..hmm, right..

Anyway, I’ve just realised that these things are all over the internets so you probably know all about these already, I don’t know why I bother.

I dug my old Seagull 4B out the other week for the first time in about a year. I picked this up from a junk stall on Dongtai Lu when I first moved to Shanghai for 150rmb or so and was the camera that first got me into film.

Actually I never even intended to use it, I thought it looked cool and planned on just throwing it on a shelf somewhere, but curiosity got the better of me and I stuck a film through it.

I’ve been addicted ever since! It’s been in bits a couple of times but everything’s fine and dandy now!

I upgraded to a Yashica 124G after putting about half a dozen films through it but Swiss James has that on loan and I was desperate to get out and take some pics after not taking any for about six months.

Anyway, here’s some pics from the reel I finished off last weekend: continue reading…

I read about this place in a magazine and decided that my top priority for the weekend (it was a quiet one a few weeks back) was to own one of these woks.

The woks are unusual in that they are made the old way, hand beaten with hammers (as opposed to modern ones which are just pressed in a machine), I’m a sucker for things like this, they’re very nice though, a web of indentations in the pan show every hammer strike as the craftsman transformed the flat piece of iron into the woks you buy.

continue reading…

I was coming back from Singapore yesterday when I saw these monstrosities at the airport.

Crocs o-dial mobile phone / blackberry holders which can be worn around the neck with the optional string or, of course, on your belt with the integral belt clip (by far the coolest way to wear it in my opinion).

What’s more, with those familiar little holes the whole thing is fully customisable!

Word on the street is that Swiss James already has two of these on order, one for his mobile and one for his camera.

I bought H a new camera the other week, it’s a Sony T700. It’s definitely the most girly camera I’ve ever seen in my life, but I was amazed at the picture quality and some of the functions so I’ve been using it more than anything else recently

One of the functions the camera has is the ability to recognise smiles, you press the smile detection button and it analyses the person being photographed and waits until the smilometer reaches a certain level before taking the photograph. It works most of the time (you have to strain a bit sometimes) but when it’s dark it’s a bit hit and miss and for one or two people it just wouldn’t work (despite them grinning until you could see their gums and their lips were about the split).

A selection of heartwarming smiles captured for eternity by the Sony T700

Also, if you’re photographing someone who’s not smiling there’s a function which contorts their face so it looks like their smiling, when used in moderation this can tastefully change the tone of a picture, see below.

But we’re not interested in doing things by halves, we go straight to maximum here at Dingle Speaks!!!

A deluge of smiles, courtesy of the Sony T700

Well, Swiss James has already mentioned this but we’ve both got these new fangled Air Guitars by Takara Tomy. They’re proper fancy, all these nice buttons and inbuilt tunes to play along to (including Are you gonna be my girl” by Jet, Walk This Way, Smoke on the Water, Let it Be and a load of Japanese tunes). You’ll get the essence of how they work from Swiss James’s video but I think it’s basically got a little man inside that presses a button every time you strum the imaginery guitar.

Anyway, Swiss was round on Friday night and we got it wired up through my sound system (in between the B52s and the tumblers of rum).

The pyjamas were a gift I’ll have you know but Swiss James kept insisting that I wear them, weirdo. I have it on good account that they’re extremely fashionable so I don’t want to hear any nonsense from Stropgirl when she reads this!

Oh, by the way, whatever you do, don’t mention the price though, I picked mine up in
Taiwan at a fraction of the cost Swiss james paid for his, he’s very sensitive
about it!

I went to the F1 the other week in Shanghai, it was an exciting affair but it’s all very much 2 weeks ago now so it’s a bit late to write about it. Anyway, needless to say, my mum and her fella really got into the spirit of things and a fun time was had by all

The place was flooded with cameras, most notably large SLRs with extremely long white lenses. My friend was one of them, let’s call him “John” for the sake of argument.  He stood at the railings taking photos and then noticed another guy about 20 feet away with a similar setup taking photos and occasionally looking across. “John” responded, taking pics and then looking across as the other guy did the same, “Hey, what lens do you reckon that guy’s using, 200? 400?” he said, and “I think it’s a prime, it’s a prime”, subconsciously he reached down and extended his zoom lens to the maximum while the other guy was looking away. As I looked around you could see a similar pattern around the stadium, guys with unfeasibly large cameras never closer than 20 feet to the next guy, all taking photos and keeping a surreptitious eye on the guys close to them. It was as if they were all taking part in some kind of mass mating ritual, parading their plumage and watching over their territory. Poor old Woai arrived rather late in the day with a rather meagre looking lens. He looked around at the competition, took a few photos while “John” was away and then scuttled away to carve out his own territory away from the big boys.

After 2 weeks of processing, “John” uploaded some pics to flickr, sure enough as I look at the set again there are almost as many pics of guys with cameras as there are cars.

I went to Nanjing the other week (which I might get round to blogging about eventually), on the second day we went for a walk in a park and came across the usual bunch of of old people exercising and people flying kites. Half of them were sat around, presumably making small talk about the state of the wind that day, how they used to come here while it were still a ming palace or how they used to able to buy 1km of nylon string for 2 fen and still have enough to buy a portion of xialongbao; the other half were holding the ends of extremely taut pieces of string, which, if you looked hard enough, were attached to tiny dots of colour in the sky.

Nanjing Kite Society

One of them was struggling to string up an odd looking kite, it was kind of shaped like an octopus but was just made of fabric and string, no sticks, it caught my interest, we went over for a chat.

Octopus – a strange subject for a kite

It turns out that “teacher Wang” was the leader of the Nanjing Kite Society and had invented this kite himself he said, “it is based on parachute principles” he said, sure enough the kite had lots of fancy wind pockets to propel the kite to the edge of space itself. It had taken him two days he said, he had made it himself. “Can we see it fly” I asked, “Yes, of course!”, “HURRAY!!!”.

GET WIND!!!

He unravelled the string and my friend helped him to launch it, off he went, sprinting backwards, the kite followed, about 10 feet off the ground and floated to the ground the second he stopped, momentarily bobbing upwards every time he jerked the strings in an attempt to bring it up. We tried again, and again, and again.

Mr Wang walked back to us, winding up the string, “it’s the wind” he explained, “it died down a while ago”, actually I’d already noticed a late arriver struggling to get his red crab in the sky, “this kite needs level 2 wind” (kite speak), I pretended to understand and agreed with him

“Let me show you how it would look” he said, and off he took, sprinting round the park with the kite six feet behind him. When he got back he was panting like a hot dog “DID YOU SEE? DID YOU SEE?”

Teacher Wang – Lord of all Kites

In the end I was so amused we offered to buy it from him and took it home for 50rmb (with string), I’m just waiting for level 2 wind and I’ll be out there, ruling the skies. I can guarantee it’s going to fly better than the last kite Swiss James tried to fly.

Are you suffering from a chronic ailment but can’t afford to go for expensive acupuncture treatments? Dinglespeaks presents a quick and easy way to enjoy the benefits of acupuncture at ABSOLUTELY NO COST WHATSOEVER*!

What’s more Professor Dingle’s DIY Acupuncture Therapy(TM) CURES ALL MANNER OF PATHETICALLY VAGUE AILMENTS**!!!! Including “feeling a bit off colour”, “it feels funny when I do this doctor” and “I think I caught a chill in my leg”

Acupuncture, if you don’t know, involves a practitioner (generally a wisened elderly Chinese gentleman with a white, wispy Fu ManChu moustache who speaks in proverbs) violating various parts of your body with thin needles in a room thick with incense. He then charges you a lot of money, I’m not sure how much but it’s probably something like a million dollars per treatment.

Here at DingleSpeaks we don’t like to throw money around the way that other bloggers do so we have developed a way of getting this vital treatment for free! Here’s a step by step guide to how it works:

Items you will need

• A single pair of socks
• A sponge
• A saucepan
• A syringe (or another means of delivering droplets of fluid)
• An apartment close to ground level

1 – When you get up in the morning don’t change those socks! Get another days wear out of them, and another, and another, we recommend keeping them on for at least 4 or 5 days until they positively hum.

DINGLE TOP TIPS – switch off that air conditioning, engage in sports, put plastic bags between your socks and shoes, keep those shoes on 24 hours a day (use another plastic bag over each foot to keep the bed clean), anything you can do to maximise odorification.

2 – Stop washing for the duration of the conditioning period, you’ll be throwing away all of those wonderful delicate odours, premature washing reduces the efficacy of Professor Dingle’s DIY Acupuncture Therapy(TM).

3 – After conditioning is complete (estimate 4 or 5 days) take peel off the socks and place into a saucepan full of water, dip the sponge into the water, clean between the toes and squeeze the sponge out into the saucepan. Next, you’re going to re-wet the sponge and collect vital scent from other key areas of your body.

DINGLE TOP TIP - use that little attachment on your nail clippers to recover as much toe-cheese as possible from down the sides of the big toe nail, add to the water.

Key Sponging Positions for Scent Collection

4 – Heat the water to around 80°C until you can just see vapour rising from water, don’t heat too much or you’ll break down those delicate scent molecules!! Simmer at this temperature, occasionally squeezing the socks to maximise percolation, keep simmering until the water has reduced by 90% and the potency of the liquid is at maximum

DINGLE TOP TIP – use the extraction fan on maximum setting

5 – Take a long shower, a proper one mind you, not your normal day to day rinse, we’re talking the monthly big one, you know, soap and shampoo, all the bells and whistles. This really is essential, if you are not completely clean and scent free before treatment begins you will be at risk of receiving acupuncture therapy in inappropriate areas.

6 – Draw some of the potent liquid into a syringe and make yourself comfortable, lie on the bed, play some relaxing music.

DINGLE TOP TIP – separate the remaining liquid into dose sized portions and put into the freezer for future use

7 – You’ll need a friend to help you here, using the syringe, place a droplet of water at each of the key acupuncture sites, refer to this helpful diagram below of the key acupuncture site in the human body

Key Acupuncture Positions

8 – After a few minutes, the droplets will begin to evaporate, taking the delicious aroma with them, you will probably notice the room becoming darker as swarms of mosquitos gather outside the window. Your companion needs to open the window, only for a few seconds though, just long enough to allow sufficient mosquitos into the room for effective treatment.

9 – The mosquitos are guided directly to the acupuncture sites by the scent and begin the painless*** treatment, lie still and relax, think about all the things you can buy with that money you have saved!

DINGLE TOP TIP – relax as much as possible to miminise your blood pressure and maximise the treatment time, treatment finishes as soon as the mosquitos bellies are full. Once the first batch of mosquitos are about to peel away in formation, reopen the window for a few seconds to let the next squadron in.

DINGLE TOP TIP – if mosquitos are in short supply tie string around their necks to prevent them from swallowing, the frustrated mosquitos will continue the acupuncture treatment for the whole 10/15 minutes! NOTE – you’ll need to use very thin string, find an old spiders web and take some of the spider silk.

10 – After 10 to 15 minutes the treatment is complete, you are already feeling stronger and fitter than you ever did before, give the room a good dose of RAID and take a good shower to prevent further, unwanted treatment. Spend the rest of the evening relaxing and stretching, maybe practise yoga or pop down to the local brew-house for a few well deserved pints of ale (can be used in combination with Professor Dingle’s Weekend Hangover Science Diet).

*approximation

**some risk of malaria / Japanese encephalitis / dengue fever, minimise treatments in areas with endemic outbreaks.

***some patients report a mild discomfort at the site of treatment for several days afterwards.

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