Firstly, the Chinese government, in its infinite wisdom and benevolence, has now abruptly decided that the residents of the Middle Kingdom shall not be allowed onto Blogger, meaning that I've just spent an enjoyable hour cursing said government and looking for the miniscule number of proxy sites that the shadowy internet monitors (who I like to think of as nefarious, shadowy baddies in suits sequestered in very dark rooms) haven't cottoned onto and blocked yet. And, for now at least, I have found one, so I am still here. Strangely, all of the Guardian's current China-themed articles (including those with titles such as 'Secret Tiananmen Square Memoirs of Chinese Party Leader To Be Published that are, erm, somewhat uncomplimentary about the government) are allowed, and yet my blog, the content of which is not (or has not been until this paragraph) remotely seditious, is blocked. Geh.
Anyway, at the same time as clicking on every proxy link in existence, I was also meandering through said China-themed articles on The Guardian website, when my eye happened to catch upon the headline 'China to open first sex theme park.' Now, take a guess where said theme park is. Yep, no prizes for guessing that it's not only in Chongqing, but is attached to the incomparable Meixin (due to limited proxy access I can't attach a link, but rifle through March or April's entries and you'll find it).
So, the noble plan was that once you've been suitably thrilled by a visit to the world's biggest public toilets, you could go underground, where Love Land promised to offer you 'naked human sculptures, giant replicas of genitals and an exhibition about the history of sex and sexual practices in other countries.' Park director Lu Xiaoqing claimed that the park would be educational and informative, saying that he would 'pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty.' Which evidently explains the centre of his marketing campaign (again, unfortunately I can't do pics or links at the moment, but you must click on this):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/15/china-sex-theme-park-love-land
Unfortunately, The Guardian appears to be a little out of date, for the BBC informs me that in the last couple of days the government has now put the kibosh on the project for fear that it was too 'vulgar.' It's unknown whether the existing attractions of Meixin, including seats with holes instructing small boys where to stick their penises and a plastic Christ the Redeemer statue perched atop a shed, will also fall victim to this sudden and surprising outbreak of classiness. Sadly, however, it does seem that this potential paradise of skag is, for now, not to be :(.
Sunday 17 May 2009
Thursday 14 May 2009
My Dear Mushroom
So, over the last few weeks our Chinese lessons have started, and we've been having fun amusing our friend and Chinese teacher, Jenny (yes, even in China there are bajillions of Jennys - thanks again for that dear parents) with our terrible Mandarin. According to Jenny I have already cultivated a Chongqing accent, and although this basically means I am as crap at doing tones properly as the locals are, I'm taking it as a compliment.
Anyway, Chinese has some brilliantly literal words ('jeans' in Chinese literally translates as 'cowboy trousers') but our absolute new favourite is the word for mushroom, 蘑菰 or 'mo gu.' According to Jenny, the Chinese also use 蘑菰 as a word to describe someone of rather limited brain capacity. Taking inspiration from this, we have thus adapted the anglicized version, 'mogu,' to affectionately describe all of our, erm, slightly dimmer kids.
Now, I have a good few really bright students, I have plenty of average Joes (although the only kid I have who is actually called Joe is a little ten-year old shithead who likes shouting out 'F-U-C-K' what it mean?), but, well, there are a few little sweeties who appear to be just a few sandwiches short of a picnic. They are the children for whom you repeat a word five times, demonstrate it, attempt to use every possible means at your disposal (including, often, translation by the Chinese teacher) to convey that 'apple' means 'pingguo,' and yet will still be met with a smile and a completely blank stare. You can practically see the tumbleweed bouncing through their little minds as they smile sweetly and uncomprehendingly at you. And these are my mogus.
My favourite little mogu is Bobby. Bobby is my youngest student at Aston, being only four years old, and is a gorgeously vacant little kid who attends the parent and child class with one other student, five-year old Lily. At first, I thought Bobby was struggling because he was so young, but Annie, my Chinese co-teacher and I have come to the conclusion that he is in fact just a wee bit dim. A typical attempt to teach Bobby something goes like this:
Jenny: What is it (holds up flashcard at Lily)?
Lily: It's a rabbit?
Jenny: Are you a rabbit?
Lily: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: What is it (holds up flashcard at Bobby)?
Bobby: Monkey
Jenny: Are you a monkey (points at Bobby)?
Bobby: Monkey
Jenny: Are you a monkey (points at Bobby and then at monkey picture, shakes head)?
Bobby: It's a monkey.
Annie: Ni shi houzi ma? (Are you a monkey? in Chinese)
Bobby: Monkey.
Annie: Bobby, ni shi houzi ma?
Bobby: It's a monkey.
Jenny: Annie, are you a monkey?
Annie: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: Lily, are you a monkey?
Lily: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: Bobby, are you a monkey?
Bobby: [blank stare]
(continue by revising 'girl' and 'boy' flashcards and getting Bobby and Lily to say 'I'm a boy,' 'I'm a girl.' Try 'are you a monkey?' again to no avail ad infinitum)
Yep, the kid's the cutest mogu in all of Chongqing. Poor little mushroom. Anyway, Katie and I have been bandying about the word 'mogu' for a couple of weeks now, so I just thought I'd share. I love 'mogu' as a word, and would also like to forewarn a certain Ms VD Trinh that she might have been proclaimed 'Mogu In Chief'. I mean sure, Van, you're a med student, which indicates that you might be part of a strangely academic subset of mogus, but in every other respect you embody the virtues of true mogu-dom. I hope you are proud, and that you embrace Bobby and his friends in your heart as your own little mushrooms.
Anyway, Chinese has some brilliantly literal words ('jeans' in Chinese literally translates as 'cowboy trousers') but our absolute new favourite is the word for mushroom, 蘑菰 or 'mo gu.' According to Jenny, the Chinese also use 蘑菰 as a word to describe someone of rather limited brain capacity. Taking inspiration from this, we have thus adapted the anglicized version, 'mogu,' to affectionately describe all of our, erm, slightly dimmer kids.
Now, I have a good few really bright students, I have plenty of average Joes (although the only kid I have who is actually called Joe is a little ten-year old shithead who likes shouting out 'F-U-C-K' what it mean?), but, well, there are a few little sweeties who appear to be just a few sandwiches short of a picnic. They are the children for whom you repeat a word five times, demonstrate it, attempt to use every possible means at your disposal (including, often, translation by the Chinese teacher) to convey that 'apple' means 'pingguo,' and yet will still be met with a smile and a completely blank stare. You can practically see the tumbleweed bouncing through their little minds as they smile sweetly and uncomprehendingly at you. And these are my mogus.
My favourite little mogu is Bobby. Bobby is my youngest student at Aston, being only four years old, and is a gorgeously vacant little kid who attends the parent and child class with one other student, five-year old Lily. At first, I thought Bobby was struggling because he was so young, but Annie, my Chinese co-teacher and I have come to the conclusion that he is in fact just a wee bit dim. A typical attempt to teach Bobby something goes like this:
Jenny: What is it (holds up flashcard at Lily)?
Lily: It's a rabbit?
Jenny: Are you a rabbit?
Lily: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: What is it (holds up flashcard at Bobby)?
Bobby: Monkey
Jenny: Are you a monkey (points at Bobby)?
Bobby: Monkey
Jenny: Are you a monkey (points at Bobby and then at monkey picture, shakes head)?
Bobby: It's a monkey.
Annie: Ni shi houzi ma? (Are you a monkey? in Chinese)
Bobby: Monkey.
Annie: Bobby, ni shi houzi ma?
Bobby: It's a monkey.
Jenny: Annie, are you a monkey?
Annie: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: Lily, are you a monkey?
Lily: No, I'm a girl.
Jenny: Bobby, are you a monkey?
Bobby: [blank stare]
(continue by revising 'girl' and 'boy' flashcards and getting Bobby and Lily to say 'I'm a boy,' 'I'm a girl.' Try 'are you a monkey?' again to no avail ad infinitum)
Yep, the kid's the cutest mogu in all of Chongqing. Poor little mushroom. Anyway, Katie and I have been bandying about the word 'mogu' for a couple of weeks now, so I just thought I'd share. I love 'mogu' as a word, and would also like to forewarn a certain Ms VD Trinh that she might have been proclaimed 'Mogu In Chief'. I mean sure, Van, you're a med student, which indicates that you might be part of a strangely academic subset of mogus, but in every other respect you embody the virtues of true mogu-dom. I hope you are proud, and that you embrace Bobby and his friends in your heart as your own little mushrooms.
Thursday 7 May 2009
Hammer Man
Not only am I sad that I can't have pictures on the blog for the next few weeks, but am also wishing I had a way to add sound. That way I could better communicate THE ANNOYINGNESS OF A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR WHO HAS SUDDENLY STARTED HAMMERING LOUDLY ON THE WALL ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY.
Yes, our hitherto quiet neighbour, whoever he (or she, but I'm assuming he's a he because men are stupider and like to bash things more) may be, has gone wrong in the head. He for some reason has decided to bang constantly at something in his apartment with a large hammer for about seven hours a day, commencing at the rather anti-social hour of 8am. I hate him.
I have no idea what he is doing - unless he is a blind man who is also in possession of the world's worst set of Ikea instructions, no piece of furniture assembly requires three whole days of near-constant hammering. Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he is tearing down the wall between our apartments breezeblock by breezeblock because he wants to be our new roomie. I do not know. I do not care. I just want him to STOP!
Anyway, Hammer Man TM, as he is now officially known, is a bad neighbour. He has, though, inspired me to write my first song on the guitar, which, on second thoughts, probably makes it a very good thing that this blog does not support sound clips. I haven't written about my adventures in guitar playing, but about a month ago we 'borrowed' a cheap, out-of-tune and unloved old guitar (manufactured by the interestingly-named 'Stains and Music') from school, and Katie has been teaching me how to play it (I can do American Pie n'all now :). Guitar is fun, and it proved very easy to use the minimal number of chords I now know to express my displeasure at the evil lurking next door.
The song is still a work in progress, but its general theme involves ramming the hammer (metal side first) up the sphincter of a certain individual. And I want some help with the lyrics - how should I improve on/continue the following?
There was a man who had a hammer in his hand,
He banged it all day to complete some pointless task.
And all that endless banging drove us fucking mad,
So we thought we'd ram his hammer up his arse.
Whoa--oh, Hammer Man,
We're going to stick that hammer where the sun don't shine,
Whoa-oh, Hammer Ma-an,
Shove that hammer backwards right up your behind.
And yes, before you ask, my quest is to become Phoebe from Friends.
Yes, our hitherto quiet neighbour, whoever he (or she, but I'm assuming he's a he because men are stupider and like to bash things more) may be, has gone wrong in the head. He for some reason has decided to bang constantly at something in his apartment with a large hammer for about seven hours a day, commencing at the rather anti-social hour of 8am. I hate him.
I have no idea what he is doing - unless he is a blind man who is also in possession of the world's worst set of Ikea instructions, no piece of furniture assembly requires three whole days of near-constant hammering. Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he is tearing down the wall between our apartments breezeblock by breezeblock because he wants to be our new roomie. I do not know. I do not care. I just want him to STOP!
Anyway, Hammer Man TM, as he is now officially known, is a bad neighbour. He has, though, inspired me to write my first song on the guitar, which, on second thoughts, probably makes it a very good thing that this blog does not support sound clips. I haven't written about my adventures in guitar playing, but about a month ago we 'borrowed' a cheap, out-of-tune and unloved old guitar (manufactured by the interestingly-named 'Stains and Music') from school, and Katie has been teaching me how to play it (I can do American Pie n'all now :). Guitar is fun, and it proved very easy to use the minimal number of chords I now know to express my displeasure at the evil lurking next door.
The song is still a work in progress, but its general theme involves ramming the hammer (metal side first) up the sphincter of a certain individual. And I want some help with the lyrics - how should I improve on/continue the following?
There was a man who had a hammer in his hand,
He banged it all day to complete some pointless task.
And all that endless banging drove us fucking mad,
So we thought we'd ram his hammer up his arse.
Whoa--oh, Hammer Man,
We're going to stick that hammer where the sun don't shine,
Whoa-oh, Hammer Ma-an,
Shove that hammer backwards right up your behind.
And yes, before you ask, my quest is to become Phoebe from Friends.
Xi'an
Firstly, I'd like to thank you all for your kind support regarding my accelerated ageing process. It makes me feel so much better as I'm examining my face for traces of incipient crow's feet to know that I have such supportive friends and family. And yes mother, I know well that on the day that I actually do turn thirty you shall relish the opportunity to begin taking revenge for years of old crone jokes.
According to my manager, who conducted an autopsy on my beloved laptop, Tilly is showing signs of 'significant charring' on the inside, which I interpret to mean that she is really, most sincerely dead. Thank the lord my parents' home contents insurance provider for some reason sees fit to cover the possessions of a 24 year old (note emphasis) wastrel daughter gallivating around thousands of miles from the parental pile, which means that hopefully I can be supplied with Tilly 2 for free sometime in September. Anyway, because of computer self-immolation* I now have to write blogs in the internet cafe and that, sadly, means that I can't upload any pictures. This makes me very sad, not only because blogs without pictures are boring, but because I have so many good pictures from the last few weeks, including some wonderful manglage.
Last weekend we finally got some time off due to China's Labour Day (typically for China, this ostensible celebration of the communist worker is generally celebrated by going shopping), and so we took the sleeper train up to Xi'an for four days for a break. It was pretty ace, but so as not to bore in this pictureless void of a blog I shall keep descriptions brief. We of course went to see the famous Terracotta Warriors, which despite being encased in a huge concrete complex are actually quite amazing. Qin Shi-Huang, the first emperor to unify China and the guy who who commissioned the army of thousands (way back when in the 3rd century BC - mum, you might remember) had just a wee tendency towards being a power-crazed despot - apparently historians believe that he was so convinced that his rule would continue in heaven that he had the army made to give him the edge in cosmic battles. Unfortunately for him, the majority of them actually look quite smiley and friendly rather than fearsome, which might be why his earthly dynasty lasted a grand total of three years after his death.
Aside from bonding with terracotta dudes, we also hired some boneshaker bikes to do a tour of the ancient city walls, visited some Tang dynasty (7th century AD) pagodas, and went dining and bargaining in the brilliant (read: completely chaotic) Muslim Quarter, from where I bought my first presents for folks back home. Oh, and spent a lot of time chilling, chatting to folks, playing ping pong and drinking copious G and Ts in one of the nicest hostels I've ever stayed in. For 3 pounds a night. I love China.
Oh yes, I should note that Xi'an was actually sunny, and after even two days I finally have something resembling a tan (although thankfully not at Madame Tango levels quite yet). Despite everyone we meet in China telling us about this supposed brain-frying heat of Chongqing, so far it's appearing to be essentially the Manchester of the East in terms of its climate. I know I'm going to regret saying this, but, Chongqing, bring on the heat.
* BTW, what's that thing called where people set on fire for no apparent reason? Stories about it generally turn up in esteemed periodicals such as Love It! and Take a Break. It came into my mind when writing about Till and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. Typing 'people on fire' into Google for some reason did not help.
According to my manager, who conducted an autopsy on my beloved laptop, Tilly is showing signs of 'significant charring' on the inside, which I interpret to mean that she is really, most sincerely dead. Thank the lord my parents' home contents insurance provider for some reason sees fit to cover the possessions of a 24 year old (note emphasis) wastrel daughter gallivating around thousands of miles from the parental pile, which means that hopefully I can be supplied with Tilly 2 for free sometime in September. Anyway, because of computer self-immolation* I now have to write blogs in the internet cafe and that, sadly, means that I can't upload any pictures. This makes me very sad, not only because blogs without pictures are boring, but because I have so many good pictures from the last few weeks, including some wonderful manglage.
Last weekend we finally got some time off due to China's Labour Day (typically for China, this ostensible celebration of the communist worker is generally celebrated by going shopping), and so we took the sleeper train up to Xi'an for four days for a break. It was pretty ace, but so as not to bore in this pictureless void of a blog I shall keep descriptions brief. We of course went to see the famous Terracotta Warriors, which despite being encased in a huge concrete complex are actually quite amazing. Qin Shi-Huang, the first emperor to unify China and the guy who who commissioned the army of thousands (way back when in the 3rd century BC - mum, you might remember) had just a wee tendency towards being a power-crazed despot - apparently historians believe that he was so convinced that his rule would continue in heaven that he had the army made to give him the edge in cosmic battles. Unfortunately for him, the majority of them actually look quite smiley and friendly rather than fearsome, which might be why his earthly dynasty lasted a grand total of three years after his death.
Aside from bonding with terracotta dudes, we also hired some boneshaker bikes to do a tour of the ancient city walls, visited some Tang dynasty (7th century AD) pagodas, and went dining and bargaining in the brilliant (read: completely chaotic) Muslim Quarter, from where I bought my first presents for folks back home. Oh, and spent a lot of time chilling, chatting to folks, playing ping pong and drinking copious G and Ts in one of the nicest hostels I've ever stayed in. For 3 pounds a night. I love China.
Oh yes, I should note that Xi'an was actually sunny, and after even two days I finally have something resembling a tan (although thankfully not at Madame Tango levels quite yet). Despite everyone we meet in China telling us about this supposed brain-frying heat of Chongqing, so far it's appearing to be essentially the Manchester of the East in terms of its climate. I know I'm going to regret saying this, but, Chongqing, bring on the heat.
* BTW, what's that thing called where people set on fire for no apparent reason? Stories about it generally turn up in esteemed periodicals such as Love It! and Take a Break. It came into my mind when writing about Till and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. Typing 'people on fire' into Google for some reason did not help.
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Another Year Older...
So, today I was chatting with the Chinese teachers at are school (who are all lovely), and the conversation turned to what our Chinese zodiac signs were. Now, with the exception of our manager, who has recently hit the big 30, every single employee at our school is between the ages of 21 and 26, and so we were trying to group ourselves into our relatively limited Chinese star sign groups.
When I said I was 24 and was thus a rat according to the Chinese zodiac (supposed characteristics: talkative, pioneering, quick-witted, friendly, terrible with money - actually far better than my crappy western star sign of Capricorn, whose sole characteristics appear to be stolid, conservative dullardness), they looked at me with blank incomprehension. According to them, if I was 24 then I would have to be born in 1985, and thus I would be an ox. I attempted to refute that logic by saying I was born in December 1984, and woulld thus still be 24 for another 8 months, but this was met with jokes that I was trying to deny my age!
So, it turns out that in China your age is dependent on the year of your birth; like racehorses, all Chinese people age a year on January 1st (yet they still celebrate birthdays -I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with that.) For a person like me who is born on December 28th, this effectively adds a whole year to my age. So, until September at least, when I will revert to the comparative youthfulness of 24 for a few more blessed months, I have now officially hit the big fat quarter century...
When I said I was 24 and was thus a rat according to the Chinese zodiac (supposed characteristics: talkative, pioneering, quick-witted, friendly, terrible with money - actually far better than my crappy western star sign of Capricorn, whose sole characteristics appear to be stolid, conservative dullardness), they looked at me with blank incomprehension. According to them, if I was 24 then I would have to be born in 1985, and thus I would be an ox. I attempted to refute that logic by saying I was born in December 1984, and woulld thus still be 24 for another 8 months, but this was met with jokes that I was trying to deny my age!
So, it turns out that in China your age is dependent on the year of your birth; like racehorses, all Chinese people age a year on January 1st (yet they still celebrate birthdays -I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with that.) For a person like me who is born on December 28th, this effectively adds a whole year to my age. So, until September at least, when I will revert to the comparative youthfulness of 24 for a few more blessed months, I have now officially hit the big fat quarter century...
Monday 27 April 2009
ST*&*(&(*D F*!&@%G C*($&@$R
I am interrupting this blog's regularly scheduled silence in order to announce that I am having a very bad day. This is because at approximately 2am this morning my computer decided to set itself on fire. There was I, happily sat in bed wasting time meandering around the little-trodden paths of internet (actually being very swotty and reading some journal articles for my masters, so probably very little-trodden indeed), when all of a sudden I noticed a rather strange and decidedly unpleasant smell. To my, ahem, surprise, acrid black smoke was pouring out of the power socket. Rather less surprisingly, as I was going 'shit........,' Tilly the evil laptop then decided to make a strange noise and then turn herself off.
Now Tilly has a history of wilful, capricious and downright shitty behaviour (it was a bad idea to name her after a wilful, capricious and downright shitty 11th century wannabe queen of England), but self-immolation really takes the fucking cake. Unsurprisingly, she's now not turning back on, and so I whilst I am going to take her to the repair shop this week, I suspect that she might this time actually be dead as a dodo. The power supply has gone funny before and was (eventually) fixed, but given that a) I am in China and they might not have the facilities to fix a laptop with a very unusual power connection and b) she set herself on fire, I am not that optimistic as to her future.
I am hoping against hope that eventually she will be able to turn herself on, even if it is temporary, because ALL MY FUCKING STUFF IS ON THERE! Everything before I left for Prague is backed up, but my photos aren't, and lots of important documents I need aren't (although I have got some of the most important stuff stored in Gmail). I shall hang onto her festering corpse until I get back in the hope that either someone can make her come back to life, or I can have the fun of smashing her crappy little body into tiny pieces.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Now Tilly has a history of wilful, capricious and downright shitty behaviour (it was a bad idea to name her after a wilful, capricious and downright shitty 11th century wannabe queen of England), but self-immolation really takes the fucking cake. Unsurprisingly, she's now not turning back on, and so I whilst I am going to take her to the repair shop this week, I suspect that she might this time actually be dead as a dodo. The power supply has gone funny before and was (eventually) fixed, but given that a) I am in China and they might not have the facilities to fix a laptop with a very unusual power connection and b) she set herself on fire, I am not that optimistic as to her future.
I am hoping against hope that eventually she will be able to turn herself on, even if it is temporary, because ALL MY FUCKING STUFF IS ON THERE! Everything before I left for Prague is backed up, but my photos aren't, and lots of important documents I need aren't (although I have got some of the most important stuff stored in Gmail). I shall hang onto her festering corpse until I get back in the hope that either someone can make her come back to life, or I can have the fun of smashing her crappy little body into tiny pieces.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Mangled English - The Album
Throughout this trip, I have been continuously amazed by the terrible yet wonderful things that English can do in the hands of non-native speakers. Excluding our friend in Prague who was responsible for joylessness way (which, I fear, may never be topped), the Chinese must have some claim to be the undisputed masters of mangled English. Examples of their exquisite crafting of English sentences abound in Chongqing, and they run the gauntlet from the incomprehensible to the unintentionally genius. The best will still be showcased here, but I am - alas - far too lazy to devote a blog post to every double entendre or pile of garble that I come across.
It is thus with great pleasure that I invite you to peruse Mangled English: the Album. Yes, there is an album. On Picasa. That you can look at. The album will grow in time and new photos will appear on the interweb, but here is a teaser of the delights that lie in store if you click here:
These were spotted in our hotel in Chengdu a few weeks ago, and left us wondering just what do they do that is so uncomplimentary? Grow little spines to leave you with hideous cuts? Shout at you and tell you you're doing it all wrong? Laugh at the poor guy who's using it and tell him he should have bought a smaller size? Suggestions as to behaviours of uncomplimentary condoms are of course welcome.
It is thus with great pleasure that I invite you to peruse Mangled English: the Album. Yes, there is an album. On Picasa. That you can look at. The album will grow in time and new photos will appear on the interweb, but here is a teaser of the delights that lie in store if you click here:
These were spotted in our hotel in Chengdu a few weeks ago, and left us wondering just what do they do that is so uncomplimentary? Grow little spines to leave you with hideous cuts? Shout at you and tell you you're doing it all wrong? Laugh at the poor guy who's using it and tell him he should have bought a smaller size? Suggestions as to behaviours of uncomplimentary condoms are of course welcome.
Though It's Hard to Avoid Being Sad, I Want To Be Happy in MXCJ
As we all know, many times in life there are things that are just so crap that they swing all the way back round to amazingness again. Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' for one, or the terrible/wonderful skagfest that is 'Oxford Blues.' And after only six weeks in Chongqing, I would already be confident enough to wager that a good proportion of the world's amazing/crap things can be found right here in China.
A couple of weeks ago (I know, bad blogger), we had the good fortune to stumble upon one of these gems. We were not forewarned of the shitfest that awaited us; we simply thought we were going to 'Foreigner Street,' which according to the guidebook and to other westerners in Chongqing had some good foreign restaurants and cafes (and, believe me, I do miss coffee and cakes). What the book neglected to mention, however, was that Foreigner Street was situated in Meixin or MXCJ, which I think may actually be the world's worst theme park ever.
Now, 'theme park' may be a tad too generous as a descrption of this place. There weren't really any rollercoasters, and - thank the lord - you didn't have to pay to get in. Rather, this was Chongqing's attempts to present its citizens with a veritable panorama of the delights that exist across the globe. Only, because this is China, it somehow got it more than a little bit wrong. It was situated right on the edge of down (and next to it were rural houses and farms), and looked like this:
Attractions of this theme park thus included:
- An exhibit devoted to Thai culture with the following tagline:
- Little chairs in the shape of bums, some of which helpfully had holes to instruct little boys where to place their penis and testicles.
- A big plastic Jesus spinning atop a wooden shed on a recently dug mud hill. I don't need to go to Rio now that I've seen this:
- A tape on loop that included the tracks B.I.N.G.O., Alouette, I Went to the Animal Fair, and the Alphabet Song. The first one of which was then stuck in my head for days.
- A fake Great Wall made out of breezeblocks.
Rather aptly, however, Meixin's main claim to fame is that it boasts the world's largest public toilet, which is modestly titled as this:
There are literally floors of toilet stalls (which, as this is China, are holes in the floor). Upon entering this labyrinth of lavatorial delights, you are confronted by a statue of a naked baby who 'pisses' water upon your head. Nice. Sadly photo of said baby did not work out, but I did manage to capture some of the helpfully rendered instructions for the uninitiated on how to piss:
There were also lots of signs abounding that instructed foreigners to 'call Helena' if they wanted to invest in replicating Meixin somewhere else. Sadly I didn't write down her number, but if you think that these attractions would go down well in your hometown, I'd be happy to go back and find out for you. On second thoughts, no, I wouldn't.
Oh, and after all of that the - three - cafes and restaurants on 'Foreigner Street' were all very, very closed.
Sunday 5 April 2009
火锅
To condense the customary apology: sorry for no blogging/have been very lazy/will try to do better so please keep checking etc etc. And now that's over, let's move on to one of my favourite things in the world: food. I love food. I love making it, looking at it, smelling it, talking about it and, of course, eating it, which I have been known to do in rather sizeable quantities. In short, I am an unapologetic hog. And given China's considerable culinary reputation, great food was one of the things I was looking forward to the most about moving to Chongqing. Suffice to say, it has not been a disappointment; food is abundant, cheap and delicious, and it will take far more than one post for me to even start to express the wonders of Sichuan food.
Where better to start though than with huo guo, which is the Chongqing speciality. When any Chongqinger with a smattering of English approaches us to try out their skills (this happens frequently, and is normally accompanied by requests to pose for a photograph with them), one of the things they are almost guaranteed to say is 'do you like huo guo?' I dread to think what would happen to the poor soul who answered 'no,' as huo guo is a matter of such local pride that to snub it would be like telling the residents of Pisa that you don't think much of the Leaning Tower, or the folk of Anfield that you think Liverpool FC are a big'ole pile of shit.
Although it's usually transliterated into English as hot pot, huo guo literally translates as 'fire pot,' and is definitely deserving of that moniker. To whit, it looks like this:
Now, that is by anyone's standards a sizeable quantity of chilli. And this is hotpot in a relatively tame state; when it heats up it starts to fizzle menacingly and give off acrid chilli fumes that makes poor foreigners' eyes water and noses expel phlegm in considerable quantities. It is so toxic in smell that it could be used effectively by the police as a means of crowd control.
And yet, despite its initially off-putting aroma, this fearsome brew is delicious. It is a communal meal; the hotpot is places and heated in a hole at the centre of each table, and you then order various delights- which can be anything from fish balls to rabbit's blood and lamb's testicles - which you place in the hot oil to cook. After a couple of minutes, armed with chopstick in hand you delve in to the cauldron to dig out your food. And although it is spicy, it's not actually the pot of death juice that it appears to be - on coming out of the pot, the food tastes really, really good.
Hotpot is not the only dish in which the Sichuanese indulge their love for chilli. One dish we ordered in Chongqing arrived looking like this:
With all the chilli-fied delights on offer in Sichuan, we've found that our palates have adjusted to spice with alarming speed. As my home cooking adventures in Sichuan cuisine have progressed (on which more to follow soon) I have found myself adding ever more liberal amounts of chilli and chilli powder to dishes, and have even come round to the Chinese way of considering green chilli as essentially a vegetable. Much as Van has been known to stay behind in the kitchen to dollop a fat blob of Vietnamese fish sauce on her fajitas, I wouldn't be altogether surprised on my return to Blighty to find myself surreptitiously adding chilli powder to the strangest of dishes.
Where better to start though than with huo guo, which is the Chongqing speciality. When any Chongqinger with a smattering of English approaches us to try out their skills (this happens frequently, and is normally accompanied by requests to pose for a photograph with them), one of the things they are almost guaranteed to say is 'do you like huo guo?' I dread to think what would happen to the poor soul who answered 'no,' as huo guo is a matter of such local pride that to snub it would be like telling the residents of Pisa that you don't think much of the Leaning Tower, or the folk of Anfield that you think Liverpool FC are a big'ole pile of shit.
Although it's usually transliterated into English as hot pot, huo guo literally translates as 'fire pot,' and is definitely deserving of that moniker. To whit, it looks like this:
Now, that is by anyone's standards a sizeable quantity of chilli. And this is hotpot in a relatively tame state; when it heats up it starts to fizzle menacingly and give off acrid chilli fumes that makes poor foreigners' eyes water and noses expel phlegm in considerable quantities. It is so toxic in smell that it could be used effectively by the police as a means of crowd control.
And yet, despite its initially off-putting aroma, this fearsome brew is delicious. It is a communal meal; the hotpot is places and heated in a hole at the centre of each table, and you then order various delights- which can be anything from fish balls to rabbit's blood and lamb's testicles - which you place in the hot oil to cook. After a couple of minutes, armed with chopstick in hand you delve in to the cauldron to dig out your food. And although it is spicy, it's not actually the pot of death juice that it appears to be - on coming out of the pot, the food tastes really, really good.
Hotpot is not the only dish in which the Sichuanese indulge their love for chilli. One dish we ordered in Chongqing arrived looking like this:
With all the chilli-fied delights on offer in Sichuan, we've found that our palates have adjusted to spice with alarming speed. As my home cooking adventures in Sichuan cuisine have progressed (on which more to follow soon) I have found myself adding ever more liberal amounts of chilli and chilli powder to dishes, and have even come round to the Chinese way of considering green chilli as essentially a vegetable. Much as Van has been known to stay behind in the kitchen to dollop a fat blob of Vietnamese fish sauce on her fajitas, I wouldn't be altogether surprised on my return to Blighty to find myself surreptitiously adding chilli powder to the strangest of dishes.
Wednesday 25 March 2009
Mangled Names
One of the many wonderful things about the language school where we are teaching is that all the pupils at the school are given English first names to use. This is an absolute lifesaver, as it saves me having to learn the near-identical sounding (but, alas, tonal and thus likely to be badly mangled by my foreign tongue) Chinese names of over 100 students.
There seems, however, to be very little consistency as to how our students acquire their English names. Some of the little kids who are just starting English classes are named by us, but many of our students arrive with English names intact. And some these names are wonderful. Absolutely, head-spinningly wonderful. Between us, Katie and I are currently teaching:
- Scrabble
- Derail
- Sharpie
- Moon
- Susie (boy)
- Tessie (boy)
- Uriel
- Sun
- Sago
- Ice
- Sesame
- Thunder
- GeeGeeBoy
Now some of these missteps I can understand. Some kids seem just to directly translate the meaning of their Chinese name into English, but whilst 'Little Cloud' might be a perfectly lovely name in Chinese, it is a rather less than wonderful moniker in English. Although, y'know,Sun,Moon, and Ice actually sound pretty cool. Others, however, seem to have just opened a dictionary and picked names out completely at random. Scrabble? Sharpie??? Derail???? Why on earth, when a child is looking for an English name, would anyone happen upon 'derail' in a dictionary and decide they want the little darling to be named after a train accident?
And finally, GEEGEEBOY????. There are quite simply not enough WTFs in the universe.
There seems, however, to be very little consistency as to how our students acquire their English names. Some of the little kids who are just starting English classes are named by us, but many of our students arrive with English names intact. And some these names are wonderful. Absolutely, head-spinningly wonderful. Between us, Katie and I are currently teaching:
- Scrabble
- Derail
- Sharpie
- Moon
- Susie (boy)
- Tessie (boy)
- Uriel
- Sun
- Sago
- Ice
- Sesame
- Thunder
- GeeGeeBoy
Now some of these missteps I can understand. Some kids seem just to directly translate the meaning of their Chinese name into English, but whilst 'Little Cloud' might be a perfectly lovely name in Chinese, it is a rather less than wonderful moniker in English. Although, y'know,Sun,Moon, and Ice actually sound pretty cool. Others, however, seem to have just opened a dictionary and picked names out completely at random. Scrabble? Sharpie??? Derail???? Why on earth, when a child is looking for an English name, would anyone happen upon 'derail' in a dictionary and decide they want the little darling to be named after a train accident?
And finally, GEEGEEBOY????. There are quite simply not enough WTFs in the universe.
Speed Blogging / Mangled English III
Ah yes, so the blog died again. Oops. I did mean to do it, but somehow between eating huge amounts of dumplings (my trip is basically a tour of Communism and dumplings), learning to appreciate Sichuan spice, loving the fun that is warbling at the KTV bar and, oh yeah, teaching some people some stuff, it got rather forgotten and neglected.
As this blog has only just reached Beijing and is now officially a month behind true time, I have decided to give up any attempts at comprehensiveness, and as such the blog is just going to magically skip forward to today, March twenty-whateverth. The month in a nutshell: there was a very expensive teahouse, time spent wandering round Xi'an at four in the morning, a lovely apartment, some hotpot, a drunken training session in Chengdu, an ultrasound, pandas, some lost piss, and a shiny new permanent residency card. They were all supposed to be blog posts and some of them are even half-written, but, alas, apart from the oblique references above they are now sadly lost to the vagaries of time as I cannot be bothered to write them. Although in cryptic, abbreviated form my month does sound like one long drug-induced dream, which makes me feel more interesting than I actually am.
So anyway, this blog will now morph back into normal, Prague-style mode in which instead of posting tedious updates about 'places what I have been to' and 'stuff what I have done' I will just, as the fancy takes me, post tidbits and random musings about life in China. And where better to start than with a celebration of unintentionally prescient Chinglish? I happened upon this little gem today in Eling Park:
P.S. For those of you that care (Mum), I have just put a few pics of Chongqing up in my Picasa. This album will grow as I add more over the next few days, so stay tuned to see some pretty pics of neon lights etc.
As this blog has only just reached Beijing and is now officially a month behind true time, I have decided to give up any attempts at comprehensiveness, and as such the blog is just going to magically skip forward to today, March twenty-whateverth. The month in a nutshell: there was a very expensive teahouse, time spent wandering round Xi'an at four in the morning, a lovely apartment, some hotpot, a drunken training session in Chengdu, an ultrasound, pandas, some lost piss, and a shiny new permanent residency card. They were all supposed to be blog posts and some of them are even half-written, but, alas, apart from the oblique references above they are now sadly lost to the vagaries of time as I cannot be bothered to write them. Although in cryptic, abbreviated form my month does sound like one long drug-induced dream, which makes me feel more interesting than I actually am.
So anyway, this blog will now morph back into normal, Prague-style mode in which instead of posting tedious updates about 'places what I have been to' and 'stuff what I have done' I will just, as the fancy takes me, post tidbits and random musings about life in China. And where better to start than with a celebration of unintentionally prescient Chinglish? I happened upon this little gem today in Eling Park:
P.S. For those of you that care (Mum), I have just put a few pics of Chongqing up in my Picasa. This album will grow as I add more over the next few days, so stay tuned to see some pretty pics of neon lights etc.
Sunday 15 March 2009
Mangled English Part 2
And so to China, and where better to start than with some Mangled English. This series of posts has sadly lain dormant for over a month as there were no deserving successors to joylessness way, but predictably China has furnished us with some blogworthy examples of what English can do when it is chopped up, mashed to a pulp, and then stuck back together with kiddy PrittStick.
This first one is taken from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which is, in case you haven't heard of it, rather a major tourist attraction. Given that the Chinese government is supposed to have, erm, improved the quality of Beijing’s English signs in the run up to the Olympics, I dread to think what this read like a couple of years ago.
(Click on the photo to make it a readable size)
Alright then. So, even if you’ve remembered to ‘dress properly,’ have satisfactorily shown your ‘ticket, monthly ticket and year ticket when entering the park’ and resisted the temptation to bring in those nefarious watermelons, you’re not quite in the clear; those superstitious activities and other lavatorial behaviours are hard to avoid, kids. And remember, no leaking allowed.
This first one is taken from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which is, in case you haven't heard of it, rather a major tourist attraction. Given that the Chinese government is supposed to have, erm, improved the quality of Beijing’s English signs in the run up to the Olympics, I dread to think what this read like a couple of years ago.
(Click on the photo to make it a readable size)
Alright then. So, even if you’ve remembered to ‘dress properly,’ have satisfactorily shown your ‘ticket, monthly ticket and year ticket when entering the park’ and resisted the temptation to bring in those nefarious watermelons, you’re not quite in the clear; those superstitious activities and other lavatorial behaviours are hard to avoid, kids. And remember, no leaking allowed.
Saturday 14 March 2009
Through the Gobi Desert
Our final leg of the train journey (sob) was from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing, a journey which took us through the heart of the Gobi desert. About five hours after leaving UB, the snowy wastes finally petered out, only to be replaced almost immediately by this:
Most of the Gobi isn't officially true desert, so the sandy wastes were mixed with a lot of scrubby grassland, but it was certainly large and empty enough to see why Outer Mongolia is pretty much used as international shorthand for 'the middle of nowehere.' It is quite surprising just how much of the Eurasian steppe is simply empty and desolate waste or one kind or another.
There were, however, a surprising amount of camels. According to our trans-Siberian guidebook, which was written by a complete train geek and is usually correct on anything train-related, there are only about 500 camels left in the Gobi. As such, we weren't expecting that we would see any at all. I now suspect, however, that whoever did this survey may have adopted the scientifically dubious method of counting camels from the train window, as I'd say we saw about half of the Gobi's supposed camel population within about 12 hours. Either that or the camels just really like playing chicken with the train. Don't suppose there's much else to do.
Anyway, if you squint really hard you might be able to identify these humped creatures as camels:
Until the Chinese border, the train also boasted the most blinged-out restaurant car in the world, ever. Our little faces lit up with sheer delight when we saw the tack-tasticness of this:
Sadly, our belief that we had a lot of Mongolian togrogs left to spend was misplaced - the huge wad of notes we had was actually composed of notes worth about 0.5p - so we weren't able to fully sample the delights of this magical world. But although the cups of coffee we were able to afford certainly did not afford us with too much joy, the surroundings more than made up for it.
After a long stint in the bogie-changing shed at the Mongolian-Chinese border (I dread to think how many listless hours we have spent on sidings and in sheds during the trip) we finally made it to China. The guidebook had told us that the Chinese border post was decked out in fairy lights and that the Vienna Waltz was played to greet each incoming train, but sadly this proved not to be true. There were, however, soldiers hiding out in the undergrowth, which always makes you feel very very wanted and welcome indeed.
The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia looked remarkably similar to its Outer neighbour (viz: desert), but when we woke up in the morning the desert had been replaced by some rather tall mountains and.....a rather large and famous wall. Sadly my camera ran out of batteries just before wall sightage, but northern China looked generally like this:
Before too many hours the train finally trundled into Beijing and we stepped off, knowing we'd made it through the desolate wastes and arrived at a part of the world that is people-friendly enough for lots of people to actually live in. For the first time in weeks, the temperature was not prefixed with a big fat minus sign, meaning that it felt positively balmy.
And so (blub), that was the end of our trans-Siberian journey. The blog has now finally also made it to China, and so there will be no more posts about vodka, or pelmeni, or mutton, or instant noodles, or, unfortunately, about frozen wee. I hope I've managed to convey a little of the literal and figurative uber-coolness of the trans-Siberian trip to you guys, but if not, suffice it to say that I've had an ace time, and would recommend this trip to anyone. Except people who can't stand cold.
Wednesday 11 March 2009
Ulaanbaatar
So, the slow blog to China, unlike the train, creeps on, and we are now up to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I'm blaming 'leaves on the line.' Anyway, the city was a very interesting place; the heir to the ancient nomadic culture of the steppes, it’s also at a crossroads between Russia and Asia, and – increasingly - between traditional culture and modernity. The place is at the moment a curious hybrid, with felt gers nestling between half-finished skyscrapers, and an in-progress Hilton Hotel perched on the edge of your typical industrial wasteland. On one corner you see monumental Soviet-inspired statement architecture, on another the gleaming towers of an Asian megacity, and on yet another, perhaps on a back street, a community of traditional gers encamped behind a small Buddhist temple. Add in some wonderful monasteries and neglected old palaces, a good few cosmopolitan touches such as the existence of a Czech restaurant, and a backdrop of magnificent mountains almost within walking distance, and you’ve got UB. Oh and yes, everything really is named after Chinggis Khan, as he is known here.
During our stay in UB, we visited some really interesting places, but unfortunately for various reasons I am underserved with photos of them. The first was the Gandan Monastery, which is the home of a 32 metre tall statue of the Buddha. Unfortunately, taking photos of temple interiors is frowned upon, so you’ll have to content yourselves with the following pictures. The temple was quite majestic, and was clearly still active as a religious site: monks and nuns were everywhere, and we even saw a group of small trainee monk boys standing outside a school. Unfortunately they were engaing in rather un-monklike behaviour by kicking each other and a small dog, but hey, even little monklet kids will be kids. The place was also filled with enormously fat pigeons (Buddhist monks' and nuns' generosity to them being, from what we could see, considerable), as you can see in the following:
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, a wonderful old complex a couple of miles out of town that felt as if it had been in a state of benign neglect for the last seventy years. It was the home of the last Bogd Khan – the Buddhist spiritual leader of the Mongol people - who in 1911 also declared himself Emperor of Mongolia when the country became independent from China. Because it is a little out of the way, the palace seems to be seldom visited, and so we were able to poke around the fascinating complex of temples completely undisturbed. There was also a museum – again, completely deserted excluding a couple of pleasantly bookish-looking staff - housing some amazing artefacts that the Bogd Khan and his wife had ordered from around the globe for their pleasure. These included beautiful four-poster beds, the most blinged-up ger I’ve ever seen, and a whole menagerie of stuffed exotic animals prepared for and shipped to the Khan by a company in Hamburg. The couple clearly had interesting tastes.
Another exciting place was UB ‘black market’ – named, of course, in the country’s Communist days – a sprawling free-for-all quite a way out of town. They stocked vast quantities of everything your visiting Mongolian semi-nomad or hip UB-dweller alike could ever need; fur hats, leather boots, silver daggers, fake Adidas trainers, reams of cloth, mobile phone charms; all, of course, at knock-down prices. It was almost endless, and amidst the large swathes of junk there were some really interesting finds, including the cutest children’s boots. If anyone fancies importing Mongolian leather children’s shoes, believe me, they would go down a storm in Crouch End. Unfortunately I have absolutely no photos of this market, as getting one’s camera out in the middle of this place would have been tantamount to writing ‘rob me, I’m a complete twat’ on my head in Mongolian Cyrillic.
Oh, but before I forget, there is also one feature of which UB should be less than proud. After considering this matter carefully - for, like the award for terrible policing, there are a plethora of contenders for this crown – I have decided that UB is home to the most aggressive and downright maniacal drivers that I have seen in any world city. Yep, ever. Unlike other places, the problem doesn’t appear to be caused by faulty vehicles or a general lack of roads: UB has traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, basically everything that you would expect of a sizeable city in terms of basic road infrastructure. The problem, however, is that all these accoutrements are completely disregarded by the road users themselves, who seem to believe, to a driver, that they are competitors in a computer game where one gets points for every item you crash into or small child that you mercilessly plough over. Red lights are routinely ignored, and cars will happily charge at pedestrians as they cross the street. It is basically complete anarchy, set to a noxious cacophony of honking, and each crossing the road inspired terror in our hearts. At the biggest junction, the situation is so bad that they have resorted to employing a ‘traffic director,’ who basically stands on a box in the middle of a six lanes of traffic and by means of a loud horn attempts to strike fear into the hearts of UB’s drivers. It didn’t appear to be having much effect.
During our stay in UB, we visited some really interesting places, but unfortunately for various reasons I am underserved with photos of them. The first was the Gandan Monastery, which is the home of a 32 metre tall statue of the Buddha. Unfortunately, taking photos of temple interiors is frowned upon, so you’ll have to content yourselves with the following pictures. The temple was quite majestic, and was clearly still active as a religious site: monks and nuns were everywhere, and we even saw a group of small trainee monk boys standing outside a school. Unfortunately they were engaing in rather un-monklike behaviour by kicking each other and a small dog, but hey, even little monklet kids will be kids. The place was also filled with enormously fat pigeons (Buddhist monks' and nuns' generosity to them being, from what we could see, considerable), as you can see in the following:
We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, a wonderful old complex a couple of miles out of town that felt as if it had been in a state of benign neglect for the last seventy years. It was the home of the last Bogd Khan – the Buddhist spiritual leader of the Mongol people - who in 1911 also declared himself Emperor of Mongolia when the country became independent from China. Because it is a little out of the way, the palace seems to be seldom visited, and so we were able to poke around the fascinating complex of temples completely undisturbed. There was also a museum – again, completely deserted excluding a couple of pleasantly bookish-looking staff - housing some amazing artefacts that the Bogd Khan and his wife had ordered from around the globe for their pleasure. These included beautiful four-poster beds, the most blinged-up ger I’ve ever seen, and a whole menagerie of stuffed exotic animals prepared for and shipped to the Khan by a company in Hamburg. The couple clearly had interesting tastes.
Another exciting place was UB ‘black market’ – named, of course, in the country’s Communist days – a sprawling free-for-all quite a way out of town. They stocked vast quantities of everything your visiting Mongolian semi-nomad or hip UB-dweller alike could ever need; fur hats, leather boots, silver daggers, fake Adidas trainers, reams of cloth, mobile phone charms; all, of course, at knock-down prices. It was almost endless, and amidst the large swathes of junk there were some really interesting finds, including the cutest children’s boots. If anyone fancies importing Mongolian leather children’s shoes, believe me, they would go down a storm in Crouch End. Unfortunately I have absolutely no photos of this market, as getting one’s camera out in the middle of this place would have been tantamount to writing ‘rob me, I’m a complete twat’ on my head in Mongolian Cyrillic.
Oh, but before I forget, there is also one feature of which UB should be less than proud. After considering this matter carefully - for, like the award for terrible policing, there are a plethora of contenders for this crown – I have decided that UB is home to the most aggressive and downright maniacal drivers that I have seen in any world city. Yep, ever. Unlike other places, the problem doesn’t appear to be caused by faulty vehicles or a general lack of roads: UB has traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, basically everything that you would expect of a sizeable city in terms of basic road infrastructure. The problem, however, is that all these accoutrements are completely disregarded by the road users themselves, who seem to believe, to a driver, that they are competitors in a computer game where one gets points for every item you crash into or small child that you mercilessly plough over. Red lights are routinely ignored, and cars will happily charge at pedestrians as they cross the street. It is basically complete anarchy, set to a noxious cacophony of honking, and each crossing the road inspired terror in our hearts. At the biggest junction, the situation is so bad that they have resorted to employing a ‘traffic director,’ who basically stands on a box in the middle of a six lanes of traffic and by means of a loud horn attempts to strike fear into the hearts of UB’s drivers. It didn’t appear to be having much effect.
Saturday 7 March 2009
Goulash - In Outer Mongolia?
I’d like you to think, for a moment, of Ulaanbaatar’s restaurant scene. If you are conjuring up images of stringy pieces of mutton served on a bed of mouldy yak’s milk, then you’re about where I was before I visited. Two weeks ago, if someone had asked me to guess where outside of Central Europe one might happen upon a Czech restaurant, Ulanbaatar would not, it is fair to say, have been my first pick. In fact, it would probably have ranked near Kisii in my internal probability stakes, which as those of you who have suffered me going on about Kenya will understand, is equivalent to ‘absolutely no way in god-forsaken hell.’ But then, what should we spy about two minutes from our hostel in UB but this:
Of course, we had to go. Whilst I wanted to find out quite why there was a Czech restaurant in the middle of UB – with the menu outside rendered in Mongolian, English and Czech -, sadly none of the (Mongolian) waiters or waitresses spoke sufficient English for any progress to be made in solving this mystery. We did, however, have a pretty authentic Czech goulash with bread dumplings, which was, frankly, heaven after two weeks of noodles and frozen pelmenny………………..
Of course, we had to go. Whilst I wanted to find out quite why there was a Czech restaurant in the middle of UB – with the menu outside rendered in Mongolian, English and Czech -, sadly none of the (Mongolian) waiters or waitresses spoke sufficient English for any progress to be made in solving this mystery. We did, however, have a pretty authentic Czech goulash with bread dumplings, which was, frankly, heaven after two weeks of noodles and frozen pelmenny………………..
Friday 6 March 2009
Teddy McRubbish
And now the long post about some place we visited is done, so to another random aside in which I demonstrate why when Jon reads these posts his head is filled with an image of my gurning features. As context, Listvyanka - the lovely village on Baikal - is full of barking dogs; as you walk down the street, each successive garden yields a big slobberin beast that will energetically let you know not to even dare think about crossing the threshold of its territory. One also appeared to laugh at Katie when she fell over, but that is beside the point.
Amidst this canine chorus, there was one particular hairy mutt that I for some reason particularly liked; he was trying so,so hard to appear fearsome and threatening and yet completely failed to do so due to the fact that he was essentially a cute, tubby ball of fur. For some reason I dubbed him ‘Teddy McRubbish,’ and for some even more inexplicable reason this name came out to the tune of ‘Beauty School Dropout.’ Unfortunately this particular breed of dog turned out to be very common in Siberia and Mongolia, meaning that I spent a significant amount of time driving Katie – and myself - mad by breaking into ‘Teddy McRubbish’ every time one came into my line of sight. The tune also prompted the reappearance in my head of the song we once composed about the Balliol quasi-pirate librarian to the same tune (lyrics unfortunately completely unfit to print on a blog my mother reads), meaning that I drove myself slowly mad for days.
Whilst I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the original and the best, here are some stray McRubbishes that were snapped in Ulan Bator. Anyone who knows what breed they are, please do tell me, because I feel the need to have one in my life.
Amidst this canine chorus, there was one particular hairy mutt that I for some reason particularly liked; he was trying so,so hard to appear fearsome and threatening and yet completely failed to do so due to the fact that he was essentially a cute, tubby ball of fur. For some reason I dubbed him ‘Teddy McRubbish,’ and for some even more inexplicable reason this name came out to the tune of ‘Beauty School Dropout.’ Unfortunately this particular breed of dog turned out to be very common in Siberia and Mongolia, meaning that I spent a significant amount of time driving Katie – and myself - mad by breaking into ‘Teddy McRubbish’ every time one came into my line of sight. The tune also prompted the reappearance in my head of the song we once composed about the Balliol quasi-pirate librarian to the same tune (lyrics unfortunately completely unfit to print on a blog my mother reads), meaning that I drove myself slowly mad for days.
Whilst I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the original and the best, here are some stray McRubbishes that were snapped in Ulan Bator. Anyone who knows what breed they are, please do tell me, because I feel the need to have one in my life.
Lake Baikal
Whilst Irkutsk was surprisingly nice (and I'm sure its pelmeni festival was even better), the whole point of the stop there was to use the city as a base to see Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest and clearest freshwater lake in the world. We took the bus down to Listvyanka - a village beside the lake - which was a 90 minute journey on a freezing old boneshaker barely warmer than outside. Admittedly, it probably didn't help that I chose to sit next to the window that was broken, but as that was the only window you could actually see through I decided that early-stage hypothermia was a small price to pay in order to see the pretty Siberian hills and forests.
Basically, Lake Baikal was huge, breezy and frozen. Unfortunately due to lack of monies (on my part, of course) we did not go dog-sledding or snowmobiling, but we spent the day wondering around the lakeside and around the pretty village of Listvyanka, which is where my glasses met their aforementioned doom. I did try to persuade Katie that she really wanted to go for a little hike in the snow up the hills around Listvyanka (and there are some photos of me looking like a demented guide leader going 'tally ho,' but at -25 she for some reason didn’t seem particularly keen on the idea.
Here are some pictures of the frozen north:
Lake Baikal would also be absolutely wonderful in the summer; it’s surrounded by mountains and in July and August is apparently even warm enough for what the guide book calls, I suspect rather euphemistically, an ‘invigorating dip.’ I now, of course, I have a lovely idea for a future summer trip – in the mythical future time when I finally get some money – crystallizing in my brain. I think it would be rather fabulous to fly to Beijing, take the train to UB and spend a few weeks in Mongolia horse-trekking and wandering around with nomads, head up to Baikal for some hiking in the pretty alpine scenery around the lake, then take the Baikal-Amur Mainline (a line that goes north of the main trans-Siberian that few people and hardly any travellers ever take) to the Pacific Coast, or even – if the line’s reached there by the time I go – to Yakutsk, where you can catch a boat down the Lena River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. One day this shall be done, and perhaps too, shall be blogged….
Advertising Genius
Now, after a month of gorging myself on cake, goulash and beer in Prague, I must admit that Russia was a bit of a dry spell food wise (China, on the other hand, is food paradise - consider yourself forewarned that there will be many long adulatory posts about Sichuan cuisine).
Now, it's not that Russian food was bad, just that it was unfortunately incredibly expensive. Everytime we went into a restaurant or cafe and read the menu, our spirits would sink as we realised that all the nice-sounding things cost over a tenner. Inevitably, we'd end up ordering borshch (beetroot and vegetable soup) or solyanka (meat soup with olives and lemons), both of which were very nice but neither of which provided our daily calorie requirements in an environment designed for animals with a blubbery mass of fat to burn off.
The logical choice, of course, was to cook food in the hostels, but as hostel cooking facilities were relatively limited, food essentially meant pelmeni. Pelmeni are essentially little flour dumplings filled with meat that you stick in a pan and boil, and they were our main calorie provider and financial saviour during our weeks in Russia. Sadly, however, we did not attend this wonderfully advertised pelmeni festival, the photo of which is the actual point of this rather rambling little post...
See. Now aren't you glad you read to the end? Even my hideously gurning mug in all its GIFfed-up glory has nothing on this beauty.
Now, it's not that Russian food was bad, just that it was unfortunately incredibly expensive. Everytime we went into a restaurant or cafe and read the menu, our spirits would sink as we realised that all the nice-sounding things cost over a tenner. Inevitably, we'd end up ordering borshch (beetroot and vegetable soup) or solyanka (meat soup with olives and lemons), both of which were very nice but neither of which provided our daily calorie requirements in an environment designed for animals with a blubbery mass of fat to burn off.
The logical choice, of course, was to cook food in the hostels, but as hostel cooking facilities were relatively limited, food essentially meant pelmeni. Pelmeni are essentially little flour dumplings filled with meat that you stick in a pan and boil, and they were our main calorie provider and financial saviour during our weeks in Russia. Sadly, however, we did not attend this wonderfully advertised pelmeni festival, the photo of which is the actual point of this rather rambling little post...
See. Now aren't you glad you read to the end? Even my hideously gurning mug in all its GIFfed-up glory has nothing on this beauty.
The Margate of Siberia
Okay, so due to the fact that we didn't have internet in our (very lovely) apartment until two days ago, the promised blogorrhoea never materialised. This meant that despite the fact that I'd already written a fair few posts on MS Word, I couldn't post any of them, respond to anyone on facebook, or even defend myself against the lovely GIF animation that miraculously appeared in the last post's comments section. But now I am back with a vengeance, and so a certain vonmonkey should await revenge of some as yet undecided kind...
Anyway, for the sake of thoroughness (and because I'm sure as hell not deleting what I've already written) my amazing time-travelling blog shall continue to write as if it is still sometime in mid-to-late February, with England still all snowy and me still somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Although I had planned to start with Mongolia, I then realised that whilst there had been a mention of its bone-chiilling freezingness, Irkutsk itself had not received any blog love. And it does deserve some, for it was a surprisingly pleasant little city.
Before I arrived, I had a mental picture of Irkutsk as a grim industrial pile, worth visiting only as a gateway to Lake Baikal, but instead I found a place with what can best be described as the atmosphere of a seaside town in the off-season. Instead of grimy old pipes, there were traditional wooden houses, some pretty art nouveau buildings, a laid-back atmosphere, and yes, even bunting and people selling candy floss and ice cream. This last delicacy may sound a bizarre choice in temperatures as low as -50, but I have been informed that Siberians actually eat ice cream in winter for warmth, the ice cream being about twice the heat of the surrounding air. I still think a warm drink would perchance be a more effective heating mechanism, but then I am not a hardy Siberian, so I know little about such matters.
Anyway, despite the obligatory ‘Lenina’ and ‘Karla Marxa’ streets and statues of communist luminaries, the centre of Irkutsk appeared to have been largely spared the delights of Soviet town planning, and even the obligatory pollution from across the frozen river appeared strangely picturesque. Apparently Irkutsk was once dubbed the ‘Paris of Siberia,’ and whilst this may be a slight overstatement of its charms, it certainly was a pleasant place to while away a couple of days. We visited the house of the nineteenth century exiles Sergei and Maria Volkonsky, members of a group of aristocrats who were sent to Irkutsk in 1825 after supporting the Decembrist plot against Tsar Nicholas I (not the one on my Romanov necklace). They had, shall we say, rather better living conditions than the majority of exiles in Siberia, and the museum contained some rather cool antiques from their house, which the kindly assistant attempted to tell us about in Russian. We didn’t understand everything, but we got the main gist and anyway, everything looked very pretty. We did then rather amuse the staff by failing to read the one sign in English in the whole museum (tour continues this way), and promptly walking through the side door that took us straight outside into the -25 cold. Yes folks, we smart.
It was also in Irkutsk that I understood my first Russian pun, and was so proud of myself that I had to take a photo, and now have to explain the joke (sorry). This sign reads ‘Las Knigas,’ which, as ‘kniga’ is a book, means that this is a bookshop making a lame pun on ‘Las Vegas.’ I was a little bit too happy when I understood this.
Anyway, for the sake of thoroughness (and because I'm sure as hell not deleting what I've already written) my amazing time-travelling blog shall continue to write as if it is still sometime in mid-to-late February, with England still all snowy and me still somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Although I had planned to start with Mongolia, I then realised that whilst there had been a mention of its bone-chiilling freezingness, Irkutsk itself had not received any blog love. And it does deserve some, for it was a surprisingly pleasant little city.
Before I arrived, I had a mental picture of Irkutsk as a grim industrial pile, worth visiting only as a gateway to Lake Baikal, but instead I found a place with what can best be described as the atmosphere of a seaside town in the off-season. Instead of grimy old pipes, there were traditional wooden houses, some pretty art nouveau buildings, a laid-back atmosphere, and yes, even bunting and people selling candy floss and ice cream. This last delicacy may sound a bizarre choice in temperatures as low as -50, but I have been informed that Siberians actually eat ice cream in winter for warmth, the ice cream being about twice the heat of the surrounding air. I still think a warm drink would perchance be a more effective heating mechanism, but then I am not a hardy Siberian, so I know little about such matters.
Anyway, despite the obligatory ‘Lenina’ and ‘Karla Marxa’ streets and statues of communist luminaries, the centre of Irkutsk appeared to have been largely spared the delights of Soviet town planning, and even the obligatory pollution from across the frozen river appeared strangely picturesque. Apparently Irkutsk was once dubbed the ‘Paris of Siberia,’ and whilst this may be a slight overstatement of its charms, it certainly was a pleasant place to while away a couple of days. We visited the house of the nineteenth century exiles Sergei and Maria Volkonsky, members of a group of aristocrats who were sent to Irkutsk in 1825 after supporting the Decembrist plot against Tsar Nicholas I (not the one on my Romanov necklace). They had, shall we say, rather better living conditions than the majority of exiles in Siberia, and the museum contained some rather cool antiques from their house, which the kindly assistant attempted to tell us about in Russian. We didn’t understand everything, but we got the main gist and anyway, everything looked very pretty. We did then rather amuse the staff by failing to read the one sign in English in the whole museum (tour continues this way), and promptly walking through the side door that took us straight outside into the -25 cold. Yes folks, we smart.
It was also in Irkutsk that I understood my first Russian pun, and was so proud of myself that I had to take a photo, and now have to explain the joke (sorry). This sign reads ‘Las Knigas,’ which, as ‘kniga’ is a book, means that this is a bookshop making a lame pun on ‘Las Vegas.’ I was a little bit too happy when I understood this.
Thursday 26 February 2009
Still Alive
Okay, so due to a combination of a lack of internet access, two small American-Mongolian children with a fondness for playing 'jail,' a long late-night conversation about poisonous animals with a guy in UB and a session of beer and Pulp Fiction in Beijing, I have singularly failed to update the blog in a whole week. This means, of course, that I will now go into turbo-speed blogging overdrive and there will be eleventy gazillion posts in a single day. Apologies again for the rather schizophrenic update pattern.
Anyway, the slow train has now finally reached its destination (although as I'm lazy, the blog name will remain the same for the next six months), and after traipsing across the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, a bit more Russia, Mongolia and China, we're now finally in Chongqing, where the last two days have been spent relaxing in our frankly luxurious apartment, eating terrifyingly large amounts of food, having comprehensive 'medical tests' to check that we're not a threat to the Chinese nation and enjoying our first visit to a Chinese karaoke bar.
Whilst it's very tempting to dive straight into writing about Chongqing, I shall resist the temptation to create blog chaos and instead ask you to pretend whilst reading the subsequent posts that the last week is a figment of our collective imagination. As such, it is now in fact Saturday, February 21st and I have just arrived in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia....
Anyway, the slow train has now finally reached its destination (although as I'm lazy, the blog name will remain the same for the next six months), and after traipsing across the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, a bit more Russia, Mongolia and China, we're now finally in Chongqing, where the last two days have been spent relaxing in our frankly luxurious apartment, eating terrifyingly large amounts of food, having comprehensive 'medical tests' to check that we're not a threat to the Chinese nation and enjoying our first visit to a Chinese karaoke bar.
Whilst it's very tempting to dive straight into writing about Chongqing, I shall resist the temptation to create blog chaos and instead ask you to pretend whilst reading the subsequent posts that the last week is a figment of our collective imagination. As such, it is now in fact Saturday, February 21st and I have just arrived in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia....
Friday 20 February 2009
Siberia
We're now in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, but before we get to that I realise that despite talking about toilets, multiple fallings over and breakages, I haven't really actually at all described where we've been over the last week. So, brace yourselves for three quick posts, illustrated with pretty pictures, about the lands across which we have recently traversed.
After leaving Yekaterinburg, we made our way by train across Siberia to Irkustk, where we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Having finally seen it, I can confirm that Siberia is big. Very big. And cold. And pretty empty. But - around the train line at least - not necessarily as empty as you might believe; on the three day journey we passed industrial, smoggy cities, tiny villages with traditional wooden buildings, lots of cargo trains transporting coal and gas, miles and miles of forest, and a 500km area near Novosibirsk called the Baraba Swamp, which looked about as welcoming as the name suggests. But - until near Irkustk at least - not hills, for Siberia is flat as can be.
I'll avoid rambling on too much, as the pictures hopefully speak for themselves, but suffice to say that the whole scale of Siberia is epic and majestic, and it's the sort of place that you can happily spend all day gazing at of the train window. It is hostile, certainly, and seeing it one can understand why it is the land of exile par excellence; even excluding the terrors of the gulags, the miles and miles of frozen nothingness extending as far as the eye can see would itself induce despair; unless granted a pardon and allowed to return, exiles would have little hope of ever making it home.
Perhaps because it is just so far away from anywhere and everywhere, Siberia also seems the sort of place where the magical could quite easily happen without too much disruption to the rest of the world; I would not have been too suprised to have seen ice bears come thundering across the plain, the stars turn into flying troikas, or some many-limbed, steamy monster emerge from the smoke and ice of the Yenisey River. Such imaginings are what three days on a train does to you.
Anyway, I'm very glad that I got the opportunity to come here and see it at its wintry and majestic best, and here are some (slightly blurry) pictures:
(This last one was taken through the window of the unheated area between each two carriages. These were freezing and the windows made very pretty ice patterns.)
Irkutsk 40 million - Jenny 0
Lest anyone think I was being smug by pointing out Katie's drubbing at the hands of Siberia, I should mention that I too failed to get the better of the frozen wasteland. In fact, it wreaked destruction upon my possessions.
Oh, I thought I was doing well, too well. Not only did my beautiful sheepskin boots mean that my tootsies were well insulated against the Siberian cold but they also came with grip, so I did not have to adopt Katie's 'five year old with rickets' walk to save myself from constantly falling over. These boots are so absolutely wonderful that I have been comtemplating writing an ode to them, but so far I haven't, which means that you don't have to suffer through my doggerel.
Anyways, Siberia was not willing to let me get away scot free, oh no. I slipped, slightly, once, coming down a steep, icy hill in Listvyanka, and whilst I was absolutely fine, sadly my glasses were not.
Voici:
Given that the temperature was somewhere between -22 and -30 at the time, my glasses were just a little chilly, and as such were not really best placed to withstand the pressure of being squashed under my hand (I was cleaning the lenses - which had completely frozen over - at the time of my little tumble).
The glasses have been temporarily fixed with a plaster, which I hope you will agree looks very cool ideed. I did get a few strange looks back at the hostel, so decided that it was perhaps best not to venture into town with these babies on. Plus, every time I look down they fall off, which is quite annoying.
So, for now I am a little bit blind. I do have a spare pair of glasses, but alas these are not quite as strong as the broken ones, meaning that I might have six months of squinting ahead. I'm trying to think that it makes me look curious and interested, but really it just makes me look stupid. Ah well.
Oh, I thought I was doing well, too well. Not only did my beautiful sheepskin boots mean that my tootsies were well insulated against the Siberian cold but they also came with grip, so I did not have to adopt Katie's 'five year old with rickets' walk to save myself from constantly falling over. These boots are so absolutely wonderful that I have been comtemplating writing an ode to them, but so far I haven't, which means that you don't have to suffer through my doggerel.
Anyways, Siberia was not willing to let me get away scot free, oh no. I slipped, slightly, once, coming down a steep, icy hill in Listvyanka, and whilst I was absolutely fine, sadly my glasses were not.
Voici:
Given that the temperature was somewhere between -22 and -30 at the time, my glasses were just a little chilly, and as such were not really best placed to withstand the pressure of being squashed under my hand (I was cleaning the lenses - which had completely frozen over - at the time of my little tumble).
The glasses have been temporarily fixed with a plaster, which I hope you will agree looks very cool ideed. I did get a few strange looks back at the hostel, so decided that it was perhaps best not to venture into town with these babies on. Plus, every time I look down they fall off, which is quite annoying.
So, for now I am a little bit blind. I do have a spare pair of glasses, but alas these are not quite as strong as the broken ones, meaning that I might have six months of squinting ahead. I'm trying to think that it makes me look curious and interested, but really it just makes me look stupid. Ah well.
Wednesday 18 February 2009
The Stalactite of Doom....
Sorry for the generally lavatorial nature of recent posts - I have now found my level and I am resolutely sticking to it. Here, therefore, are some interesting things that happen when you have a wee on a trans-Siberian train.
As on English trains, trans-Siberian train toilets deposit their contents directly onto the track. Unlike English trains, however, this is not done discreetly; instead of a pause followed by a strange suction noise, the bottom of the toilet bowl simply flips open and you can thus see your offering deposited at speed onto what must by now be a very sewagey train track.
Now this is fine in theory, but given that Siberia in February is at night twice as cold as your average home freezer, it does not work very well in practice. Understandably, the natural reaction of water or watery liquids in Siberia is to freeze, which, as the picture a couple of posts ago illustrates, means that the collective wee forms a giant pissy stalactite below the train. This makes going to the loo frankly rather interesting.
After you gingerly place your bum onto the freezing metal seat and begin to wee, the first thing you feel is your behind being bathed in a pleasant hug of warm steam. This, we think, happens because your warm wee temporarily melts the frozen dribbe of water in the bottom of the toilet bowl, but we cannot discount the possibility that the top of the 'wee column' has also been melted, and that steamy wee comes back up the toilet bowl to meet you. Which is not a very pleasant thought.
The excitment continues when you then insert toilet paper into the bowl. As the ice (and wee) at the bottom of the loo bowl have by this point refrozen, the loo roll sticks to the ice. And as the now expanding column of wee means that the toilet bowl does not fully close, a stream of Siberian air rushes in, meaning that the part of the toilet paper not glued to the bottom of the metal toilet bowl bounces around like a Mexican jumping bean on speed. It is rather hard to make it go away.
And that, I promise, is the end of all loo-related posts. At least until I eat some Sichuan hotpot....
As on English trains, trans-Siberian train toilets deposit their contents directly onto the track. Unlike English trains, however, this is not done discreetly; instead of a pause followed by a strange suction noise, the bottom of the toilet bowl simply flips open and you can thus see your offering deposited at speed onto what must by now be a very sewagey train track.
Now this is fine in theory, but given that Siberia in February is at night twice as cold as your average home freezer, it does not work very well in practice. Understandably, the natural reaction of water or watery liquids in Siberia is to freeze, which, as the picture a couple of posts ago illustrates, means that the collective wee forms a giant pissy stalactite below the train. This makes going to the loo frankly rather interesting.
After you gingerly place your bum onto the freezing metal seat and begin to wee, the first thing you feel is your behind being bathed in a pleasant hug of warm steam. This, we think, happens because your warm wee temporarily melts the frozen dribbe of water in the bottom of the toilet bowl, but we cannot discount the possibility that the top of the 'wee column' has also been melted, and that steamy wee comes back up the toilet bowl to meet you. Which is not a very pleasant thought.
The excitment continues when you then insert toilet paper into the bowl. As the ice (and wee) at the bottom of the loo bowl have by this point refrozen, the loo roll sticks to the ice. And as the now expanding column of wee means that the toilet bowl does not fully close, a stream of Siberian air rushes in, meaning that the part of the toilet paper not glued to the bottom of the metal toilet bowl bounces around like a Mexican jumping bean on speed. It is rather hard to make it go away.
And that, I promise, is the end of all loo-related posts. At least until I eat some Sichuan hotpot....
Final Scores
Ekaterinburg 5 0 Katie
Irkutsk 5 2 Katie
As well as not really being best suited to freezing conditions, Katie has had, shall we say, a few problems remaining upright whilst in Siberia. The combination of dead Doc Martens with no grip, Katie's woeful balance and packed down ice all over the streets has meant that she has managed some pretty spectacular wipeouts. After the first two, which took place in Ekaterinburg with her rucksack attached, I came up with a points system. The city concerned gets a point whenever Katie falls over, and Katie gets a point whenever she breaks something in the city. The final scores are above, and I think you will agree that it was basically a drubbing. I asked Katie if she would like to comment, and her comment is merely 'ow.'
Yesterday we went to Lake Baikal, and after two falls and one incident in which she karate-chopped me in the back of my neck in an attempt too save herself, we resorted to hand-holding. Combined with the fact that Katie is wearing approximately seventy-five layers of clothes, this basically means that she looks like a little five-year old all bundled up for winter.
My mysterious unknown Slavonic ancestor (I have been told many times -again - on this trip that I look Czech/Russian/generally Eastern Europe and not in fact English) has perhaps bestowed upon me a useful gene, for I've been finding the Siberian temperatures quite invigorating and actually not too painful. The coldest we've had so far is -32, although I'm hoping for -40 just so I can find out what that feels like. And yes, mother, I have been doing Siberia in my H & M coat....
Things That Freeze at -30 Degrees
Your eyelashes......
Your hair.......
Gunther......
Urine from the train (credit to Jesse for this picture, which I have shamelessly stolen. One of the train guards' responsibilities is to hack the column of frozen wee off when the train stops.)....
Your hair.......
Gunther......
Urine from the train (credit to Jesse for this picture, which I have shamelessly stolen. One of the train guards' responsibilities is to hack the column of frozen wee off when the train stops.)....
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