Diva, Diva!

My most satisfying musical memories are ones where the songs are from the same time period as the memory. "Beijing welcomes you" is a good example of this, it's so 2008 China. Even better is when the music reflects your generation or your friends. It's been a long time since I was current, I mean liking the music that people my age are supposed to like, at the time it comes out. With all the crap out there today, I always forget that.....while it is shit, it does represent a generation of kids. Does the generation that's just moved out of adolescence always look down on the music of the current young folk? I'm 29, so I guess I haven't just moved out of adolescence and I am rambling so anway......

Here are my two songs for this post. They are by a Korean pop group called Diva and they were introduced to me by my friend SC. I haven't seen him in person for 11 years, I haven't talked to him for about 3. His Facebook now lists his location as New York, New York. After finishing high school, he moved back to Korea to work and complete his military service requirements. A few years back he moved to the US to study fashion design in Washington, DC. I think he must have come out while at college, because he put up a video on Facebook of him singing in the "Washington Gay Mans' Choir" and his fashion sense (from his pictures) can only be described as "flaming". I'd never really thought about the possibility that he might be gay...... He was always just too gay to be gay, if you know what I mean. I always thought his gayness was like a coping mechanism. I think that Korean guys generally have two options growing up, to either be the aggressive macho, arseholes and compete in that male-dominated society, or to be a more passive, effeminate dude and not compete or be a threat to the alpha males. I had a lot of problems with Korean guys at my high school, I nearly got beaten up several times by these rich, arsehole Korean guys.....who probably had the crap beaten out of them by other Korean guys at other stages in their lives. I think that's just the way it is.

Here is a story that I think relates. I met one of the nicest Korean guys ever while studying at Bohai. He served his compulsory military service time in the marine corp, the toughest soldiers in the Korean army. He said that the first month in the corp consists of getting beaten up every single day, like 5-6 more senior soldiers get to kick the crap out of you and you can't fight back. I asked if he beat up the new recruits when he was one of the senior guys and he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Yes, what else can you do? It's the rules.". He is a genuinely nice person and I was a little taken aback that he could just beat up defenseless kids.....but I guess he had his role and part to play.

I don't want to turn this into a commentary on Korean society, because despite having met quite a few Koreans, I don't think I should really generalize too much. I just think it was pretty tough for SC growing up. He is an arty, creative, very talented musically, nice, funny guy. I'm not sure whether he knew he was gay then, but I'm sure he felt different and a little bit alienated from his culture, which is highly homophobic. I remember him being pretty unhappy about the way the other Korean guys went about things, how they had this macho pecking order and all the fights and confrontations they got into with each other. SC managed to remove himself from all that by being the funny jokester, the effeminate gay acting, non-threatening guy. So yeah, even though there were plenty of signs that SC was gay, I was actually a little surprised his current gayness..... I mean he might not be gay, but he is a fashion designer and he dresses and talks (well, comments on Facebook) like a diva..... Hehehehehe..... I remember him commenting a lot on how good-looking I was, noticing that I have green eyes (well not really, they do turn greenish sometimes though), kissing me on the mouth while drunk at a party and dancing and singing along to music like this:



I would have joined in too, if I could sing in Korean or had seen the videos to learn the dance moves. I'd never seen the videos for these songs until I found them on Youtube while looking them for this post. I remember SC having blue contacts like the girls in the video, and yelling out "Diva, diva" and doing the pose from 0.59. I remember him singing with another effeminate Korean guy Jun, who also had a great voice (a high tenor that I wish I had). Jun's mother apparently was a famous pop singer in Korea and he once sung Whitney Houston's "Greatest love of all" in school assembly. But yeah, their singing was really awesome...

I can't remember the first time I heard this group's music, but I remember really liking it straight away. I asked SC if he could buy me a copy of their CD when he went back to Korea for the holidays. He did and I think I still have it lying around in my room somewhere. But yeah, these two songs, and that whole album remind me of my 6th form year (which was probably my best at high school), of hanging out at Korean parties and drinking shoju and midori, of my friend SC and of being 17 and liking dumb pop music that was designed to appeal to kids my age. :D

Jazz Méditerranée

Good job, Mei!

There'll be no desafinado, when your heart belongs to me completely.

That was a cheap move, Mei. You go and write a great post about a great song..... and then you had the nerve to embed the video into the post (raising Moot's expectations to unreasonably high standards.....Moot will get a text link and like it!)..... and the still frame from the video is just so conveniently Jakob Dylan's beautiful, chiseled (but not overly so), symmetrical (he looks exactly the same despite the video being a mirror image) face.

I've decided that since I can't compete on sheer blogging competency, I need something to differentiate myself. I will use my lack of technology to my advantage by not telling you what my next song is. You can read through the post, place your guess in the comments section and then I will put up another post with the lovely video in it. Okay?

This song was introduced to me by a certain crafty ocelot, who picked it up on her travels. It is one of those songs that has always tempted me into thinking about investing a little bit of time into learning some of the language, just so I could sing it better. Take "Desafinado" for example, I always wanted to learn a little Portuguese so that I could sing like this:



Rather than like this (although this version is a lot of fun):



The guy who sung my secret memory song was apparently one of Joao Gilberto's main influences, and it could be argued that he too, was one of the founding fathers of bossanova music. I think this is probably enough hintage for Susie to guess who the singer is and what the song must be. Another bonus hint for Moot, the singer died a couple of years ago aged 90..... and the best anagram of his name is the hilarious "An old ravisher". If you need to have it playing at the same time as you read it, Moot, you can solve the riddle and search for the song on Youtube.....or you might just be able to find it on the living room computer.

But yeah, it's frustrating when you have a song that is so great and so catchy, yet you feel like you are defiling the language when singing it.... but defile it I did. This song was the theme song for my trip to Canada in 2001. I couldn't get it out of my head..... everywhere I went, I'd say not 30 minutes would have gone by without me humming it or singing it in my head. Sitting in the airport talking to an arsehole Canadian immigration officer (only unpleasant Canadian I met, I shit you not), watching Aunty Grace cook a foil-wrapped fish recipe that she learned from Jamie Oliver, playing pool with cousin David (and having him ask if Aunty Grace cooked the same fish dish she always makes), being unimpressed by the Niagra falls, purchasing a stupid set of clay poker chips that I have never used, sitting by some river thinking oh my god I'm 20 what have I done/am I doing with my life.....all of these occurred with my secret song lurking somewhere in the background. The question is.....what song is it?

After I finished my time in Canada, I went to see my friend Paul, who was attending Yale at that time. My theme song for that part of my trip was this song. Man, those Ivy League kids know how to party... But I suppose that is a post for another day.

You happy, mum? Too much trouble to just cut and past the link, huh?

有梦想谁都了不起

Every now and again I go to Youtube, or Youku and listen to some Chinese songs. I'm not really a huge fan of most Chinese music. I've tried, but 99% of the stuff I've listen to just sounds like pop crap..... Okay, I know I like poppy crap, but it has to be a certain type of poppy crap. One song that causes me to become a little emotional and even tear up on occasion is the official theme song from the 2008 Olympic games, "Bejing welcomes you" (北京欢迎你)....I have no real reason to write the Chinese, I just wanted to do so. Anyway, this is a little odd for me because I really fucking hated the song at the time. I mean in the days leading up to, and during the Olympics, this song was played over and over and over and over again. Given that it is a seven minute song with basically the same verse and same chorus repeated over and over again, that's not good. It's one thing to have "Bohemian Rhapsody", or something epic that changes all the time for seven minutes..... but "Beijing welcomes you" is basically a standard three and a half minute pop song that they decided to double in length to give all the celebrities a chance to sing a line. So yeah, I hated the song at the time.... However, it was played so much during this period that the song has become indelibly linked to my memories of the time. It got me thinking about all the songs that I associate with people or events or certain periods in my life. So I decide to make a list of songs that bring back the most powerful and vivid memories. Hopefully, I'll be able to get out a few blog posts on the topic..... but for now, watch the video and be amused by the fact that I think of Mikey when I see Wang Lee Hom..... Dad when I see Jackie Chan.... and Susie when I see Karen Mok..... If only Anthony Wong had gotten in on it, he would definitely be me. Sorry mum, but you are caucasian and I don't think you'd want to be associated with a cheesy song like that anyway. You get a piece of "Scotland the Brave" though. :P

Okay, I just finished a quick edit and this is a pretty long post

Alright, I am going to continue with the free-flowing train of thought-style blog posts. Mainly because I am lazy and don´t want to have to organise my thoughts too much. I´ll try not to sound like too much of an arsehole, although that will be tough cause I think fundamentally, I am a bit of an arsehole. Not in the way that I actually treat people, I hope, but in what I think. Does thinking about these things make you an arsehole if you don´t reveal them to anyone or act on them? I´ve been working hard on trying to be a nice guy, but it´s tough... I do believe that if given enough time talking to someone, I will eventually say something pretty offensive. I just have to hope that I´ve built up enough goodwill to withstand it. Anyway...

Last weekend was pretty busy for me. I went out both Friday and Saturday nights, changed my homestay accomodation and went to see some guys go paragliding.

On Friday, the language school held a barbeque with a free tango lesson before hand. I decided to give the tango lesson a shot, cause at the very least, all that instructions would be in Spanish and I could practice my listening a bit. I arrive to find that the three other students in the class were two guys and a girl who were in Cordoba to do volunteer work. One of the guys and the girl were from Spain, and the other guy, Freddo, was from France. Tango is hard... I love the music and I love watching it, but it is hard. I don´t claim to be a great dancer, but I am co-ordinated and generally pick up physical activities quickly. I think Tango is a bit like Spanish... The individual elements aren´t tough to grasp by themselves, but putting it together is a big challenge. Just standing with good posture is unnatural for me, let alone remembering to have the right pressure when holding your dance partner, moving your feet in the right way and to the right rhythmn....all while an attractive but stern tango teacher is barking instructions in a language that you don´t speak very well. It was fun though. The Spanish girl was really pretty. Unfortunately, she had super hairy arms that I could feel while dancing with her. She was also really friendly and chatty....only I couldn´t really understand anything she said. I think it was a combination of her speaking super fast and the fact that it was Spanish Spanish as opposed to Argentinean Spanish. There is actually a reasonable difference. They use ¨vos¨here instead of ¨tu¨and there is no ¨vosotros¨. It´s different even from other South American Spanish dialects... There are some new students in my class from the Netherlands and Switzerland and they say that the Spanish here sounds a lot like Italian. Cool... I wouldn´t mind speaking Italian-Spanish...I wouldn´t mind speaking any form of Spanish really...

The main event, the barbeque was good. It was my first experience with eating large quantities of meat here in Argentina. I thought it was very tasty, but wasn´t blown away. It just tasted like good barbeque in New Zealand, albeit a little more salty. It certainly didn´t compare to Jinzhou´s world famous shaokao. Man, I could go for some yangruo chuanr right now. My experience with Argentinean food here has been mixed. There are some tasty things, but the cuisine in general is a bit on the bland side. It took me a while to realize what was wrong and why I´ve been craving things like mee goreng and tonkatsu curry. They don´t really use any spices here. Even stuff like the Mexican food they have here is fairly bland (what are you doing eating Mexican food in Argentina when you are going to be vising SoCal, Dave?). I really want to go to one of the few Chinese restaurants I´ve seen around here, to see if their food is similarly underspiced. I´m sure things will be different in Buenos Aires, but there really isn´t much variety in the cuisine here. I haven´t seen any Japanese or Korean restaurants yet, no Thai, no Indian. If you like steak, meat sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, Italian food and pastries...you´ll love Argentina. Ooh...there are many really nice quaint little places that serve really delicious-looking pastries and cakes. Moot moot moot!

Anyway, the barbeque was good but not great and the company was good as well. After dinner, three Argentinean youths performed some local traditional music. Two guitars and a guy playing a wood flute or pipe or recorder thing. They were good, competent...however the music did start to get a bit samey. I prefer my Argentinean music to be of the more upbeat, dancey variety. The amusing thing is, that when they were done, one of the Swiss guys from the language school got up and played some tunes on his sax. He was pretty bad-arse... He played the theme from the Pink Panther, which I guess all saxophanists play, but he absolutely killed it (in the good way). He also played ¨All of me¨, which is one of my favourite jazz standards of all time. I felt a little bit bad for the kids who had just played, cause they were completely overshadowed.

Around 11pm, the party was winding down, so Chase made the call to head off to a club where there was going to be a hip-hop party. A hip-hop party in Argentina? Why the fuck not? I was really happy to tag along and to continue socializing with my fellow students. If you are my friend on Facebook (it´s not too late to come back, Menina), you can view the pictures from the party. Well, at least the crappy one of me that Julieta tagged. God, I look like a fricken´zombie... I´m glad that I´m not self conscious when I get in the dancing groove, cause I bet I look fucking hilarious, retarded and terrible at the same time. Anyway, it was good times... I didn´t get as wasted as I did the previous week. Mainly, I think, because I stayed away from the Fernet. Also, I think having the right people in your posse is key. You need to have people who dance because they are feeling the music and who just love to dance. I hate going out and dancing when it´s just a bunch of guys looking to score and who are only dancing to pull or to grope or whatever. I´ve been doing some thinking about why it is that I prefer dancing with girls, even though I might not actually be dancing with them. I think just being in the vicinity of people who love dancing is infectious... You look around and see them having a awesome time and really getting into the music and you can´t help but feed off that energy. I think girls just love to dance more than guys (there are exceptions, like Stu, I´d go dancing with him any day of the week....well not any day of the week, but him going dancing would be a drawcard for me to go two). One of the girls in our party was a Brazilian girl, who I think is actually a dancer of some sort. Anyway, she was a terrific dancer and I was happy to occupy dancefloor space next to her. On a related note, I think that having girls in your party puts other guys at ease. If I´m with a bunch of girls, some dumb fuck is less likely to feel threatened and think I am trying to mack onto his girl. I think this is particularly important here in Argentina, where there is a bit of a macho culture. There´s no way I would hit on a girl here that I didn´t know (not that I could anyway, with my Spanish). It´s even worse in China, I would actually move away if a Chinese girl started dancing close to me. Drunk Chinese dudes can get very over-protective and image conscious. Their girl dancing near you makes them lose face, especially if you are a foreigner. No....I don´t want to fuck your girlfriend, you short, fat, ugly, pock-marked, BO-ridden motherfucker... You can take her back home and ¨bang¨her with your one inch chode. She´s only into you for your money anyway... you piggy fuck. Whoa....there is definitely some hostility there.... better navigate away from the topic. Yeah....in short, the party was great, the music was great, the dancing was great, I didn´t get fucked up......which was great.

What wasn´t great was having to get up at 9am (after 4 hours sleep), to move out of my previous unsatisfactory homestay, into an awesome new place, that is actually a home. I don´t want to talk too much about the old place, primarily because I think to some degree, it´s not really her fault. The old lady did do the bare minimum, I guess. Her food was nice enough. She did make some attempt to talk to me some time. Problem is that it wasn´t really a home, I mean a living home. Sure, she lived with her daughter, who is a doctor and never at home and she was stand-offish anyway, but I mean it wasn´t a living breathing home. It was a home once, as evidenced by the old pictures she kept around the house. I imagine it was a pretty warm and inviting place once, when her five kids and husband were still living there. But now, I think her husband is dead and four of her offspring have moved away and it´s mostly just her and her two cats alone at home. I feel sorry for her. I don´t want to live with her, but I feel sorry for her. My new homestay are also grandparents, but they have one of their grandsons living with them and they have family visiting almost every single day. I get the impression that they are reasonably happy and content, and I think that was the main thing missing from my previous place. Unhappy people shouldn´t be homestay hosts.

Yup, so I was busy moving into my new place. I now share a room with Yusuke next to Jamie´s room. A new American kid, Chris, moved into the room down the end. It´s nice having people around. Oh, and the food is fantastic. The best meal I´ve had in Argentina was last night´s dinner. Jorge makes incredible roast potatoes and the roast beef was good as well. A few hours after I arrived on Saturday, I sat down to a traditional Argentinean 1st of May meal, ¨Locro¨. Locro is a type of stew, and the one we had was a simple beef and bean stew that was very good. They had some picante salsa to go with it that wasn´t actually very hot at all, but then again, it might have been by Argentinean standards. After lunch, Jorge´s son Marcos invited us to go watch some paragliding out near a small town about an hour´s drive out of town. Yusuke and I gladly accepted. It was a bit of a mission climbing to the top of the hill where they were jumping off, but it was worth it cause the view was magnificent and it was cool to have people taking off a few metres to the side of you. I hadn´t really been out of the city at all, so it was nice to get some fresh air and peace. I wish I´d brought my camera. Heheheheh.....Yusuke took some pictures. I think I might see if I can steal them off him. But no promises, I am toying with the idea of making this a pic-free blog and making you wade through paragraph after paragraph of text. You can choose not to read....no one´s twisting your arm. I hate taking photographs.....I suck at it. Don´t make me take photographs.... I just need to get other people to take them, then tag me in them on Facebook. Paragliding was cool... Not that I did it or will do it...... but it was cool.

We got back around 8 and started to contemplate plans for the evening. Jamie was trying to organise to meet up with Ricardo, who was going to a party. However, none of us have an Argentinean cell number, so all this had to be done via Facebook. Not the most efficient way... To cut a long story short (cause I´m getting pretty tired of writing and my eyes are sore), we didn´t meet up with Ricardo, we ended up going out, but I was tired after only 4 hours sleep the night before and we weren´t with any girls who loved dancing. We went to a pretty big club on the outskirts of town, and it was packed and pumping....but I was falling asleep on the couches in the outdoor smoking area. We got back at 5am and I was glad to tumble into bed.

Sunday was a rest day. I got up at 1 and just chilled out the whole day. I did some study, which was badly needed, in a park but it started raining, so I then moved to a cafe, which is so Susie. I was really happy to receive that compliment. :) ...... and yeah...... that´s about it. I think that´s me done for now. Chau.

Not the smartest thing I´ve ever done

Yesterday, I had a two hour and a half hour day. I got up at 6pm, washed my face, brushed my teeth, walked to McDonalds, ate a Triple Mac combo while resisting the urge to hurl with each bite, walked to the internet cafe, attempted to write emails but couldn´t cause of a lack of coordination, walked back home and went to bed at 8.30pm.

I blame this crappy day on myself. I am a retard who doesn´t listen to his own body telling me that it is exhausted and doesn´t want to go out partying.

So my Saturday starts out fairly uneventfully, I do the same thing I always do in Cordoba, the same thing I always do in any new city......wander around aimlessly......well, not quite aimlessly, cause I was fucking hungry and in search of food. My wanderings took me to a modern looking mall tucked away somewhere. I think it´s in between the city centre and the student area of town. Anyway, all of the other places I´ve been to in Cordoba were old and quaint looking, like what Cashel Mall used to be. I was beginning to think that Cordoba was a city stuck in time and free from crass modern consumerism. I was wrong. This mall was like every other modern mall I´ve ever been to. Think of it like a Riccarton mall but a little smaller, that serves ribeye steak in the food court. I guess maybe it did have slightly higher end stores as well. Anyway, I decided to go for a cheesesteak from a place that had an official stamp that certified it as being ¨typical food¨of Argentina. It was aight. In a strange twist of fate, I randomly met up with my fellow classmate Jamie, an Englishman, and the two foreign students that he shares a homestay with, a Japanese guy and a Brazilian girl. Lucky bastard... I have a 19 year old American kid named Chase...... who is exactly what you would imagine a 19 year old American kid named Chase to be like. Also, I´m staying in a house owned by an old lady, that smells like old and faintly of catpiss (although I´m pretty used to that by now). I don´t hate my current homestay situation, I´m just jealous that Jamie has two cool roomies and an actual homestay ¨family¨ who takes them out to do stuff. Anyway...man I sound like a whiney bitch.

I spent the afternoon hanging out with three other Spanish-learning foreign students. We went to the Parque Sarmiento, which is the biggest park in Cordoba. It was a little disappointing, cause in my mind, I kinda expected it to be a bit nice. I keep forgetting that Argentina, while one of the most developed and wealthiest countries in South America, is still in fact part of South America and is not a developed country. So when, we turned up to the lake in the middle of the park and it was a disgusting slimey green colour and full of rubbish, I shouldn´t have been surprised. There was also a huge swarm of ducks and geese....massive, enormous creatures. Not surprising too, cause nearby there was a roast nut and popcorn stand, where a bored looking lady kept tossing out what I think was like dried corn kernels or something. Anyway, yeah......the park was alright. We went a saw a crappy little amusement park in the middle as well. Man, I´m sounding like an arsehole. It was a crappy little amusement park though, with rides similar to the ones you get at the Agricultural show in Christchurch. I´d say that the riverfront park in Jinzhou is of comparable level to this one, and believe me, that´s not a compliment. I guess if I was in a better mood, I would say that it was quaint and charming.

Anyway, I get invited out to a bar and club that night. We would meet at 11pm outside the mall we had lunch in. I was tossing up whether or not to go. 30 hours of Spanish classes during the week really sapped my body and mind and I was still a little fatigued at that point. Basically, my daily routine has been going to class, going for a post-class walk to clear my mind, coming home, having dinner and then sleeping.....that´s it. So this was my chance to do something fun, to party in Argentina and to dance to cool latin music. After much deliberation, I decide to go......hey, if I feel tired I can always go home early. They arrive half an hour late, which isn´t surprising, but still a little nerve-wracking cause I didn´t know if I´d gotten the right place and I don´t have a Argentinian phone cell number yet. We then head off to a smallish bar somewhere in Nueva Cordoba (which is the student area), which conveniently had a dance club above it. Lisi (the Brazilian girl) had a female Argentinian friend (who appeared to be a bit of a town skank) join us and we started off with some Argentinian beers. Conversation was a bit tough with the language barrier, but we managed to communicate to some degree. At times it did degenerate into me talking to Jamie in English about sport, Lisi talking to Ivana in Spanish and poor Yusuke sitting in the corner looking bored. After, a few beers the ¨chicas lindas¨that Ivana promised would be joining us, joined us. They were pretty far from lindas, I´d have to say. When she asked if we thought that they were lindas, me and Jamie both pretended not to understand. Ah, the advantages of being a complete noob.

We then head upstairs to the dancefloor. Jamie and I get a couple of big plastic cups filled with Fernet and Cola. I think this was the start of my downfall. These drinks were pretty strong. Fernet is a liquor made from herbs that tastes like Chinese medicine. These drinks tasted a lot of Chinese medicine and not much of coke. So everyone started drinking these. We start dancing, and the music is great. I love latin music. We drink more Fernet and coke and dance some more. The place was pretty dark and dingy and sparsely decorated. It kinda reminded me of the old Bush or a shitty student bar down in Dunedin. It got pretty packed later on as well, there wasn´t a whole of room to move. Things start to get a bit blurry for me after a certain point. I remember feeling fine and great, then oh shit what the fuck. So we leave the bar around 5am and I somehow walk back to my place. I don´t know how I managed it, cause I have enough trouble finding it during the day while sober. In retrospect, it probably wasn´t a great idea considering I´ve been told that it isn´t particularly safe wandering that area at night. Having said that, there were a lot of people out and it was well lit the whole way. But yeah, I get back around 6am, rip off my clothes and fall into bed. I should have probably gotten myself some water to drink cause I had a pretty fierce hangover the next day. I think it was the combination of mixing beer and liquor, plus having that liquor being of weird herbal origin. I was fucked up and I won´t be doing it again. I think I´m not going to get drunk again on my South American trip. It´s just not worth it..... I lost one complete day and I feel like crap even two days later. I´m too old for this stuff. The dancing to latin music was fun though, and next time I will do that sans alcohol.

Flight to Buenos Aires

So I was sitting in my window seat on my flight to Argentina, watching other passengers board and hoping that the cute blonde Brazilian girl who had been sitting opposite me in the departure lounge would be my company for the next 12 hours. Ideally, no one would be sitting there cause extra space > cute girl, no matter how attractive she is. But seeing that the flight appeared to be fairly full, if I´m going to have to share close quarters with someone, I´d prefer that they look and smell nice. Unfortunately for me, while I did get a Brazilian (hahaha), it was of the male middle-aged variety rather than someone who possessed the important qualities of T&A. On further reflection, this wasn´t the worst result. The guy was skinny, he didn´t smell, he let me have the central armrest, and didn´t attempt to talk to me. This got me thinking about my ideal neighbour on a long haul flight. There are several different factors that are important in determing whether or not I am going to enjoy....well not enjoy, but not completely hate.....having someone sitting uncomfortably close to me for a long period of time.

Gender
This is not as important as I would have first thought. Females are preferable because they are, on average, smaller and smell nicer than guys. Obviously, I´d much rather sit next to an odorless, small man than some sweaty 300 pound female behemoth who forgot to take her sponge bath. Even sitting next to an attractive female isn´t a particularly big drawcard. Best case scenario is some mild flirting and maybe an extra Facebook friend. Sneaking off to the bathroom and having crazy hot sex only happens in Playboy forums. I mean, airplane bathrooms are disgusting and cramped... What happens if, in the incredibly unlikely event that you do meet someone who is attractive enough and who wants to fornicate with you in the bathroom, that you find the previous occupant has just laid a massive smelly deuce? Do you go ahead and fuck? I can´t think of many things that are a bigger turn-off than the smell of feces....although, I guess some people do like that. But yeah....gender....not really that important.

Smell
This is pretty crucial. Having flown many times in China, I can tell you that people can get some spectacularly bad BO. I had an experience on a somewhat long (maybe 4 hour) flight from Zhuhai to Beijing, where a woman had BO so bad that the only way I could tolerate sitting next to her was to stick my nose under my t-shirt and inhale my own BO the whole way. Smelling your BO is like smelling your own farts, sure it doesn´t smell great, but at least your own farts don´t make you gag....well....at least mine don´t. But generally, women smells can range from good to disgusting and men range from inoffensive to disgusting. After 5 or 6 hours of a long haul flight, no one really smells good, but at least by that stage one´s nose has become accustomed to the collective stench of everyone couped up in the cabin.

Size
Fortunately for me, I´ve never sat next to an exceptionally fat person. I am told that it is a horrible, horrible experience. I´m all for making fat people buy an extra seat... They´d only use that extra money to stuff their porky faces anyway... So the only people who lose out are the ones in the food industry. Perhaps airlines should start charging fares based on the weight and mass of the customer. I´ve always thought that it is incredibly unfair for skinny people to have the same luggage allowance as big chubby people. This section could turn into an endless rant of me bagging obese (real obese not muscley BMI obese) people, so I´ll stop here. Fuck....I know I´m going to get a whale sitting next to me on my flight from LA to Seattle.... I´ve been warned about American domestic flights by a few people already.

Talkativity
When I get on a long haul flight, I just want it to be over. I want to close my eyes and turn my brain off and magically make the next 10 hours go by quick. Having someone talking to me disrupts this plan and forces me to try to be interesting and sociable. This is easy when the person I am talking to is interesting, intelligent, funny and/or has a cute smile. However, these characteristics apply to around 5% of the general population. Quite simply, I´m not particularly interested in talking to the overwhelming majority of people, and if I´m not interested, it´s a big fucking chore to have to do it for an extended period of time. It´s not as if you can tell them to shut it and then comfortably sit next to them for a half a day. It´s a little different on short flights where there is very limited time for someone to bore the fuck out of you, or in cases where you have brusquely rejected their attempts at interaction, have them glare daggers at you. I like sitting next to foreigners cause A) people from different cultures are interesting to some degree and if you have to talk to them, then at least there is some novelty there....B) if they don´t speak good English, they are less likely to initiate conversation....at least in my experience.

So weighing up all the factors, sitting beside the middle-aged Brazilian dude wasn´t too bad at all. I still would have preferred the Brazilian girl (given that she probably smelled better, wouldn´t have been talkative either and of course there´s always T&A), but wouldn´t have traded for a random draw of the other passengers on the plane.

Oh, I just thought of something......all this only applies to adults or nearly fully grown people. Kids and babies are horrible on flights. I hate them and their parents.... at least for the duration of the flight....but at most other times too...for most kids and babies anyway.....this doesn´t apply to the kids of my friends, who are wonderful little angels..... hehehe.... hehe.... he...... *sigh*

Oh yeah, and it only applies to travel in economy class too. If you are someone who flies first or business class and pays for it out of your own pocket, fuck you. Fly economy and donate the extra money to charity, you rich fuck.

Anyway, this post has degenerated somewhat and I´m afraid to see where it´ll end up if I continue.... So.... post over, bye.

2009-06-11 Advanced HSK

After weeks of checking online, I finally received my results for the Advanced HSK exam. I am really happy to report that somehow, I managed to pass. I have no doubts that this was in part due to a large dose of luck, and I guess my fairly advanced listening and speaking skills as well. If you've read this far, I'm sure you'll probably stick around for the breakdown. My scores for each section:

听力: 65
阅读: 47
综合: 53
写作: 58
口试: 69

For a total score of 292, which is just over the minimum score of 280 for level 9.

Listening - This was very hard, and after the exam, I was sure that I'd bombed. What I forgot, was that listening isn't a strength of Korean students (who make up over 90% of Advanced HSK testees). Even though I got raped, they got raped harder and scalage probably bumped me up.

Reading - What can I say? While I had the necessary reading speed to handle the exam, I was sorely lacking in vocabulary. It's not much good being able to blaze through the texts when you only recognize 50-60% of the characters. I had to leave 8 out of the 15 questions blank in the first part, and I probably knew the answers to about 25% of the questions in the second part. I have no idea how I managed to get 47%. I'm guessing everyone else crapped out as well.

Comprehensive - Here's where the exam started to get a bit easier. I was feeling pretty down about having got shat on in the previous two sections, but it kinda took the pressure off and I relaxed and did okay in this section. 53% is probably an accurate reflection of my abilities, I knew I got a good chunk right, but I also had no effing clue about alot of questions as well.

Writing - I got really lucky in this section... Not in terms of how I performed, cause I did really well. In the 30 mins alloted, I spent 5 planning, 20 writing the requisite 400 characters and the last 5 checking for careless mistakes. This section went as smoothly as I could have hoped... and I got the lowest passing mark. Seriously, one less mark and I would have failed this section and the entire exam. I got a topic I could handle and did the best I could with my laughable vocabulary. If they'd hit us with "write a job application letter" or something equally sadistic, I would have promptly shat my pants and started crying.

Speaking - I had no worries about speaking, as this is my absolute strength and the biggest weakness of the Koreans. Listening to my fellow test-takers finish their recordings, it became obvious that I had the best pronounciation out of everyone in the whole room (excluding the teachers of course). The reading passage was fairly easy (even so, there were several characters I didn't know). Both of the disussion questions were pretty straight-forward as well. So I wasn't too surprised with my score of 69, which is actually a level 10!

So yeah... Yay me. I was so sure I'd failed, I literally yelled out and started jumping up and down when I found out I'd passed. Now I just got to figure out what to do next... Eh, something will come up... but for now... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

2009-05-18 Basketball and duck hotpot

Today was Monday (I will refer to it in the past tense cause it's nearly tomorrow) and for me, Monday is basketball day. Every Monday 4pm at Eastgate courts, I engage in battle with my ex-students, friends and random Chinese dudes who want to take on a foreigner. After two years of playing ball in China, I finally came up against a dude who is better than me. I think this says more about the sad state of casual pickup ball at the university here than my actual basketball talents. Apparently this cat plays for the university basketball team. He was about 6', maybe 6'1, and the unusual combination of being both fast and strong (99% of guys here are either one or the other, actually... most are neither). Anyway, he was a bit of a dick, as evidenced by his arrogant demeanour and his use of a pretty offensive swear word everytime he missed a shot. I would say that were I eighteen and in shape again, I would have dominated him, but that would make me a sad old man... and that's something I don't really want to be.

After two hours of fairly intense four on four half court basketball, I took my sore back to KFC to meet up with Nicholas. From there, we went to a duck hotpot restaurant. Sounds a little odd, I mean I don't really associate duck and hotpot with each other, but it was very tasty. I was expecting the soup to taste more like duck, however, as it tasted like very delicious chicken soup, I can't really complain. After eating all the boiled duck, you can add extra ingredients in traditional hotpot fashion. We added beef, potato, spongy tofu, tofu skin (dried tofu noodles, very, very good), wood fungus and "Chinese cabbage". To be honest, the stuff came out of the pot tasting like normal hotpot fare, which is disappointing cause I was hoping for something different, but is good cause I like normal hotpot quite a lot. The place was definitely worth it just for the duck/chicken soup alone. Would go back.

Now I'm back at home and have a 听写 (tsk tsk tsk) that I'm not in the slightest bit motivated to study for. I think I'll go on Facebook and take some more silly quizzes.

2009-05-17 Japanese Beef Curry

I woke up this morning ravenously hungry and in need of a quick breakfast solution. Thankfully, my wonderful girlfriend made me some very delectable cinnamon rolls in Qingdao, most of which were still residing in my freezer. I made my way up the stairs to use the microwave in the 4th floor kitchen. No dice. I then had to trudge up to the 5th floor kitchen, where thankfully, the microwave worked. Being the curious sod that I am, I decided to have a poke around and was rewarded with the discovery of some of my cooking utensils from last year. Sweet! This fortuitous development prompted me to march straight down to DaFuYuan and the nearby vegetable market, to assemble the ingredients for a delicious Japanese curry.

Japanese curry is one of the easiest things in the world to cook. The MSG and cornstarch or whatever else they put in the curry cubes, ensures a tasty and savoury result every single time. All you need to do is cook a stew and add the curry cubes at the end. What could be simpler? The recipe I learned off my good friend Pingmu calls for a large quantity of onions to be thinly sliced and cooked slowly until they are caramelized and delicious. The onions are then mixed with tomato pasta sauce. I didn't have any ready made, so I added 5-6 skinned, crushed fresh tomatoes. In a different pot, 500gms of beef was browned and half a litre of water, some paprika and a small chunk of ginger added. I boiled the beef for about 15 mins and skimmed the impurities off the top. I then added the caramelized onion/tomato mix and dusted with more paprika for good luck. After determining the beef was cooked through and fairly tender, I added a sliced up carrot and two large eggplants, also sliced finely. Mostly Japanese curry recipes call for the use of potato as a thickening agent, I prefer eggplant, I think it makes the curry taste more vegetably and less floury than the potato version. Anyway, once the carrot slices were nice and tender, I turned down the heat and added the curry block. Voila! Delicious Japanese curry, not completely faithful to the Hiraki family recipe, but still good enough for me.

I just finished stuffing my face with two bowls of curry rice, so I am feeling a little 不舒服 (Oh no you didn't Dave, God you're a wanker). I think I'm going to go take a nap before bowling tonight. Jia You me!

Snarf snarf

These next few posts are old posts that I wrote last year while I was living in China, but was unable to put up due to the Great Firewall. You can see them in their original state at http://home.51.com/masanobu81. But I warn you, the page is a little hard on the eyes.