Friday, April 06, 2007

An E-mail from "Ge la mu"

Knowledge of the word "why" is necessary if you are to find this funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlG2f9TAbEk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fholywardanceparty%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ehtml

I just love the dudes they picked as dancers.

Elsewhere in the world of political activism, a certain blog captained by the author S'mat has recently been banned in the notoriously repressive peoples republic of china. Not a word of a lie! I used to be able to read it, now I cannot.
Well actually I more recently realized that its the entire blogspot site thats been banned but for a while I thought that for sure my personal activity was being monitored and my frequent visitations to a site that makes many references to depaneurs and the singularity was deemed too subversive. So Tom can you please email me your entries. Thanks duder. And you to steve, if you're still keeping yours going.

(I guess y'all wound not be satisfied if I sent out a group-ish email with nothing more than a link to a retarded and only mildly humorous youtube clip?...so now Im trying scrambling to beef this up.)

While I was getting a 2 dollar foot massage yesterday, I saw a story on the news about a woman who refused to sell her house to developers that were planning a large project on hers and her neighbors land. (This story followed the story of a chef that was once so poor and depressed that he spent his last few yuan on shrimps which he braised in a decadent sauce and laid on top of fresh rice wine infused noodles and topped it off with enough sleeping pills to kill an elephant or even John Merrick...he narrowly survived and now is rolling in a BMW and has one of the top kitchens in Peking.) She refused all offers while everyone else accepted so the development company went ahead and dug out all around her house, about 3 stories deep and about 50 yards or so on all sides, leaving her potty old house surrounded by steep cliffs and a huge empty moat. I read today that all media coverage of this story has now been outlawed. Here are some pictures... but please: shhhh!




I recorded a radio interview on tuesday for the campus radio station. The campus airs an hour and a half of programming every weekday and the sound is boomed all over campus through sidewalk speakers disguised as landscaped boulders.The two hosts that interviewed me were so comically amateur about the whole thing. They came equipped with only 3 questions, one of which I incidentally answered in my 40 second intro. The goal that they had in mind was to do a compare and contrast of campus life in China vs. in the West. I am not the person to ask about this. They wanted me to speak about all the clubs that I had taken part in and all of the events that the student union organized (at this university they organize a speed text messaging competion!) and I could think of nary. Architecture, leisure time and summer jobs were also asked about. I was about as thrilling as the natural rocks that were used as models for the mock-rocks that will soon be broadcasting my rapid-fire pipsqueak english that will be heard by many but, thankfully, understood by few. The one plus is that I brought in some Can-Con music tracks--so for about a total of about 11 minutes next friday there will be relief from the god forsaken pop music that they love over here.

Ive been to shanghai and scaled some inner-city peaks here in Wuxi. Eaten meat on a stick and been called a chop-stick by a 70 pound Chinese girl who thought I was too skinny. Going on a trip organized by some of my students to the historic town of Suzhou next weekend to go to amusement park (what else?). Went to a club last night and watched creepy white men with pot bellies and balding patterns go fishing for epiglottises (epigloti?) in the mouths of girls so good-looking they could be Vin Diesel's girlfriends. Beat a Chinese guy at ping-pong. Beat my way through 100 Chinese guys to get on the bus. Beat my way through 1000 Chinese guys to exit a market. Will be beating my way through 10,000 Chinese guys when I attempt to purchase a train ticket to Beijing for the May 1st holiday (am going to meet up with my old pal Tom McCabe).

I dont know what else. I'm having a great time but the work has been very time consuming and so haven't had a lot of opportunity to really explore a whole lot.

Yours,

Ge la mu

By the by, my mandarin is probably worse now than it was when I left montreal but a change is gonna come. At the radio station I met this really cool person that bizarrely speaks this near-immaculate and nuanced french (learnt in Shanghai over 2 years) and wants a chance to use it, so we're going to do some language exchange thing and maybe play some ping-pong. Go habs!

2 comments:

Heather said...

Where on earth did you get a $2 foot massage?!

Eve said...

Imagine having to rappel to get out of your house in the morning. Sheesh.