Dingle Speaks

Well, I didn’t want to go but H finally forced talked me into it. Not even on a normal day either, on a saturday.. which by all counts should be far worse than a weekday.

And it wasn’t half busy, as we were regularly reminded as we walked round, “THE QUEUE FOR THE GERMANY PAVILION, THE UK PAVILION AND THE US PAVILION IS NOW 4 HOURS, THE QUEUE FOR THE FRANCE PAVILION AND SWISS PAVILION IS 3 HOURS.. etc etc etc” (the announcement didn’t actually say “etc etc etc”, I added that bit myself… Actually it turns out that yesterday, when I was there was the busiest day and the first day which the park reached it’s full capacity of half a million people (stats here), lucky me, the Saturday before there was only 360,000…

Anyway, I’ll probably blog about a couple of things, but I won’t bore you with more pavilion pics etc which everyone has no doubt already seen, ok, just one:

How H would look if she grew a ginormous platinum ‘fro

This is how Expo looks when there’s half a million people there:

Looks like a lot of fun negotiating those crowds eh!

We took a golf cart through the crowds to get from one side of Expo (Europe) to the other side (Asia), it took an age to wind  its way through the crowds.

Here’s something weird though, why would a golf buggy which typically moves at between 5 km/h and moves at a maximum of 10km/h need a speedo that goes all the way up to 100km/h??? Do they race these things in the middle of the night when the park is closed?

You know, it only seems to be a few months since I brought gold watches back but already I’m seeing a dearth of gold watches on the street, it seems like a reminder is needed..

So, I went off to YiWu with H last weekend and got golded up while I was there:

Actually I bought three gold watches of different designs (for about 2 quid each, and they’re REAL gold you know!!). It was Woai’s birthday so I figured I’d give one to him for his birthday and if me and Woai were getting golded up then I had to buy one for Balticginger too. I ended up with the gold divers watch (in the pic above) with a faux-bezel and an indecipherable name, Woai ended up with the executive Panerai style watch and Baltic ended up with the chronograph (with the chrono function just printed onto the dial rather than being actually real).

We managed to get Woai wearing his for about 10 seconds, just long enough for a photo, before he whipped it off and rearranged his sleeves to show off his Rolex, the miserable windbag…..

Anyway, that gave us a spare watch to play with! Here are some more pics of us all golded up like Russian gangsters:

Baltic presenting his signature cocktail, a large shot of Jack Daniels, lots of ice and a gold watch to finish.

Me, double fisting:

Gold vs Casio:

Balticginger between takes, at make-up

After a few beers we figured out where we’d been going wrong, gold watches shouldn’t be worn at the wrist, they should be worn slightly higher, quit a bit higher…

As you no doubt already know, it’s coming up to my birthday and a few of you are probably struggling to decide what to buy me.

Well, here’s a hint:

I never knew my life was so incomplete until I saw Haibao in gold..

So, I was eating my lunch yesterday and thinking “Hmmm, I really must upload something to my blog, it’s been a while, I wonder what I can upload” (actually I’ve got about a dozen posts all written in my head that I’ve never gotten round to uploading). I wandered back to my office and found the ayi standing in the corner next to my plant pointing a highly pumped pressure sprayer (like this) at the leaves of the plant in the corner.

I would have been fine for this except for two minor points

1. it stunk to high heaven of chemicals, god knows what was in there (I get a different answer from everyone I ask, the only thing I can be sure of is that “it will never happen again”.. watch this space..). In the end I had to open my window for the entire afternoon. By the time I left the office in the afternoon pretty much my entire collection of receipts and any loose piece of paper which I’d not weighted down had migrated from my desk to somewhere in the corner, on the floor..
2. she wasn’t just spraying the plant, it was basically as if my office had just gone through one of those automatic car washes you see at petrol stations..

Here are some of the things which were dripping wet by the time I arrived at the office:

• my whiteboard
• the walls in the corner
• the carpet in that whole corner (although that’s used to being wet, yes they still water the plants in the same way
• my cupboards
• my library of books (on the cupboard)
• a variety of customer samples (on the cupboard)
• my coffee cup (on the cupboard – now quarantined until I found out for sure what the chemicals were, probably an insecticide)
• my chair??? (which was at least a metre away from the crime scene..)

Anyway, here are some photos of my cupboard, which wasn’t merely wet it was swimming in the stuff:

p.s. moan moan moan

What better way to send a message to someone you love (or hate) than with one of these splendid apples I saw at a fruit shop yesterday. I’ve got no idea what the Chinese message is (ok, Hua did actually tell me but I completely forgot) but I’m reading the English bit loud and clear.

I might have got it all wrong though, it might be a reference to the mid 1980′s thrash metal band called Stormtroopers Of Death, their name was often shortened to SOD…

Well, Expo is finally upon us, time to offload a few photos I’ve not got round to uploading yet.

Firstly here’s a quick update to the paint smearing incident:

Yep, it’s all sorted now, oh, and I ballsed up on the previous entry, it’s on Madang Lu, not Huangpi Lu, doh..

Oh, and here’s some photos of some Expo security dudes on their way to work, a kajillion of them:

Look at them, running across the road in pairs, what are they thinking of? Always walk when you cross the road, never run! Teacher said!! and hold hands too!!

Phwwwooooaaarghhh!!! THE EXCITEMENT NEVER STOPS AT DINGLESPEAKS!!!!!

A lot of people ask what H (who looks a bit like Zhang Zhiyi according to one of Woai’s commenters) does in her day job and to be honest I’m sick of replying to the sack loads of letters (I still get emails printed out and delivered to my door) on this subject every day so I decided to just post something on the blog and move on from this whole episode.

So there you go, she’s a tricycle delivery guy’s assistant..

BOSS BOSS WE REALLY FUCKED UP THIS TIME!!

What?? what is it?? what did we do??

Well, you know the man said we had to get the building completed before EXPO in 2011?

Yeah…

Well it’s NOT 2011, it’s 2010!!! It starts in a few weeks and the man’s coming back to check on our progress, what are we going to do???

Hmm, I’ve got an idea so crazy that it might just work!

It’s not very often I blog twice in a day but I opened my curtains this morning to see the entire street filled with people. I live opposite one of the entrances to expo and we’d seen signs going up saying “tickets” since the weekend.

There have been rumours in the press about locals getting one free ticket per household and presumably today is the day they’re made available!

Here are a couple of photos, I’m praying it’s not going to be like this during expo itself!!!!

Bear in mind this is only half of it, there’s a separate queue coming from the other side! Unfortunately I can’t see how far the queue goes in the other direction..

Personally, I’d rather just pay than queue in that nonsense….

H had told me how some Chinese people can be very destructive when they move out of an apartment. In her previous apartment the previous tenant had been pissed with the landlord and smeared paint all over the apartment in an effort to cost his landlord money.

We think there’s a similar example of this kind of work on the entrance to an apartment complex on Huangpi Lu, there’s been paint smeared all over the complex entrance for over a month now, I’ve only just got round to taking a photo of it (I didn’t take photos but it continues down the inside of the lane). Haven’t got a clue what happened there, disgruntled employee/contractor?