Shanghai

Spent the other weekend in Shanghai, (work related, no fun) and man is it crazy. I wrote the following about 11 years ago when I was last there.

Peace Hotel. Roof. Flag poles atop alabaster stone buildings lining the west bank of the Bund shudder in a November breeze. Not a single piece of cloth snaps. Poles themselves are rusted, paint peeling off like sun burned skin, ropes struggle to free themselves from the charade. In the past each of these building belonged to a different flag. A hidden radio still picks up news of Kuomintang victories and the boxer rebellion.
10:44 am. An eager bell sounds the toll, keen to have the job over with. The clock-tower is underscored by a thin shallow arc of laundry roped between pole and air-vent. Yellow tea-towels. Grey jocks. A pair of stiff brown socks: the unratified flag of humanity.

Up the street, the Shanghai Club is now a Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's grand entrance, once filled with French perfumes, cigar-smoke rolled in Havana, Cognac and Champagne, is awash now in the heady aroma of the Colonel's eleven secret herbs and spices; the unmistakable fizz of Coca-Cola adding life.10:59 am. The clock issues a much more solemn note regarding the full hour. Sad almost in the racket that is Shanghai. A tug replies, mock mournfully, 'Is this what it's come to then?'

Other ferries chatter as they cross the dirty effluvia, towards the concrete apartment karsts rising from the re-educated swamps beyond the river. Much of Shanghai is floating, deaf beneath the torrent of air compressors and pneumatic drills: massive black pylon-drivers pounding foundation holes into the mud; taxi-drivers dead on their horns; grinders and drills and hammers slapping rusty iron rails; bone-dry brake-pads, screeching buses, trucks heavy with coal accelerating between clouds of bell wringing cyclists.

And, believe it or not, bird song, echoing up from the urban ravines.

Working Out

Health issues seem to dominate this cul-de-sac of the web. I spend a fair bit of time at the gym these days. It's not a gym really so much as a holding pen for aging Philippino wives. Basically my workout regime consists of me riding a reclining cycle for 20 minutes watching CSI Burlington or whatever other drivel is on and then switching to the Total Body Maximizer 200Oc or whatever the hell it is called for another 20.
I tried reading today. Poetry if you can believe it. Charles Olson's Maximus. Or an anthology peek if you like. It was somewhat incongruous to say the least. I'm not convinced the library will appreciate the little sweat craters that have formed on the pages. The strangeness wasn't eased at all by the women nattering away with their headphones on, flapping that bit of skin under their arms that my brother-on-law calls bingo wings. They like to shout above the volume of I dare not try to imagine what music being cathetered into their ears.
I thought briefly of entering into a discussion on poetics with the big hairy guy who is always there in the steam bath but it seemed like a bad idea somehow.

Massage

Stop reading this and go out and get yourself a massage. Really. They are the best thing since back-muscles. In Manila, masseuses are everywhere. They drive around in cars labeled mobile tension relief units or something like that, looking for sore shoulders. They live in basements, massaging old pipes for practice. Street corners. Trees. Everywhere. Masseurs are harder to find.

Now I am not talking about the "happy ending" sort of massage you hear about. (Truth is I have never even been offered one. A function of my hygiene?) I am talking a good old fashion rub down, about a woman, generally one quarter your size, trying to push her thumbs through the back of your skull. Last ight I swear my tongue moved. The massage is all about thumbs; you want someone who could punch a hole in a concrete wall with theirs.

Insomnia

So. A tricky storm is springing up around the corner of the building. Windows rattle, punctuating the Hollywood grade moaning sound made by the wind like teeth in a set of dentures being bought on the layaway plan. Or something.
The truth is I haven't slept in days and it is beginning to affect my writing. Death is clearly inevitable.
Though I suppose it has provided a topic. (Look at me, turning my frown upside down.) I have also managed to hook up my swish new wireless printer and, look, there on TV the new "giant ship sinks and kills a bunch of people" is on: Poseidon. Definitely not all bad: look at that wave!

Spiders

Just when I think there is nothing to write about, I hit the keyboard and dozens of tiny spiders burst from beneath the letter 'k' and start swarming over my hands. No bites so far, but here's hoping. Seriously, how better would the next entry be if I were to report a massive Philippino spider was growing in the space behind my eyeball!

Happy Birthday to Me

Even those of us who prefer to remain Eponymous have birthdays. I am turning forty in a couple of weeks and the event will not be celebrated, here, at Leah Beach as was somewhat erroneously advertised.

But rather, here, at 'White' Beach. White is a Tagalog word which roughly translates to 'Insanely Lecherous Drunk Old Man in a Toga'.


So if you find yourself in Oriental Mindoro around the end of August, listen out for the hangover. If not, and you still feel moved to get me a little something, buy the next drunk guy you come across a drink he doesn't need.

* Ride the Lightning

It would seem the obvious thing to do when you have waited fifteen minutes for a taxi is to head down into the basement and jump on your scooter. After all, how would you get through the working week if you missed that all important meeting on the new stationery ordering process. (In Manila, just so you know, they are just 'folders' ... get it?)
So what if it a category two *typhoon could be waiting for you at that first bend on the flyover? In truth, I fear it less than the drivers here who seem to think that when it rains most of the laws of physics and motion are temporarily suspended. After all, it is just wind and rain and the occasional piece of sheet metal, what could go wrong?
* Sorry to disappoint you Metallica fans
**A typhoon is like a hurricane.

Cockroaches were never a feature of the house where I grew up. Not even at university, when I lived with a large number of young men whose hygienic concerns were, shall we say, not foremost, did I have many day to day dealings with cock roaches. But here in the Philippines the cucaracha is indeed a force to reckoned with.
They fly, and word has it they bite and will drink from the corner of a sleeping child's mouth. One smack with a flip flop, for example, is rarely enough to get the job done, I have read they can live for a month without their heads. They eat paper.

Sandy walks keenly to the beach, turns at the gate to wave to me eating breakfast, safely out of reach of the guys selling coral necklaces.
His father was a fisherman pulling crayfish from the sea. He reels in pink fleshed Germans with tattoos on their shoulder instead.


The worst part of scuba diving has to be the dying. It is, after all, easy to forget you are under water and not flying in the tree tops. Though a lung or two of brine is a fishy reminder. I have often wondered what you would last think?
Probably that you’d paid too much for that coral necklace, or not enough depending on who you are, and that here at twenty meters, with the entire reef around your neck, it seems colorless by comparison.

Incommunicado

Just spending some quality time here in Oz with the wife's folks, reading and spinning yarns as they say. Not really out of choice if you have to know the truth. You see until this morning they only had a dial-up connection. (For you kids, imagine a series of squirrels with small packages running from point to point and you're close to the idea. Though, if you don't know what a squirrel is, you may be a little confused).
I have signed them up for ADSL with Telstra, the national carrier and it is a little better, though the promised 1500 kps is patchy and every now and again it won't connect to anything at all, even the Telstra site.
Here in Australia they have download limits. One package (39.99 a month) offers the following treat: up to 256 kbps and a limit of 200MB of download. So that's one way to battle Internet piracy. I suppose it is rewarding for me as a blogger to know that most Australians are willing to pay so much to read these words. Certainly wouldn't cut it in Korea.
Incidentally, Telstra shares are worth about half what they were when last floated a couple years back.

Web Fun

If ever you are bored, type a file name and extension commonly used by digital cameras into the Google Image search engine. eg dscf0001.jpg See if you can find a friend.

Tasmania

At the end, after all.

Rock Me Amadeus

8.20 LAX nachos with beef. A family of five all wearing baseball hats with maple leaves on them leap in unison to exclaim that they are going to Australia. I choke a black bean into my nasal cavity. 'Rock Me Amadeus' makes me think of simpler days. I have tried to get a decent seat on this flight, but it seems everything is booked out. The great unwashed have finally discovered the internet i guess. I have misplaced half a chocolate bar in my 'laptop'bag, I can't see that ending well. As I write this I am also trying to connect to the free wireless here at LAX without any luck. I suck at this computer stuff... ps Everybody Wang Chung tonight.

Leaving Vancouver

5.50 pm Time on road 6 hours. Almost descending into LAX. 2.5 hours of pressing ass with a fat monster truck afficianado who insists on turning to look out the window which presses his mobile phone, still clearly turned on, into my leg. As I write this he is farting on me, in real time. I can feel it through my trousers which I will now have to burn... Just beyond the horizon of his monster truck t-shirt, and just below the peak of his 'Lock and Load' camouflage hat, I can make out bits of the desert. Think of sitting beside Uranus on a plane. He lifts an empty fruit drink bottle to his lips and spits tobacco slop, completely detroying my reverie.

Sunday Afternoon

I am hard pressed to see what bloggers write about every day I gotta tell you... Today I slept late. The dorm dweller I share a bathroom with having decided on a little shower love after closing time. There is nothing like listening to college kids going at it in an enclosed space. Above me they are herding Shetland elephants.
What else? Irish hurling. Munster final was on in the pub where I ate lunch, Waterford coming on strong at the finsih to beat Limerick. You'd know if you got one of those sticks in the mouth I reckon. The helmets they wear are pretty cool; seems to me one of them was wearing the old helmet I used to wear as a kid.
Diastolic pressure remains high but Systolic levels have returned to gravy eating territory.

Wish I was here.

Need I say more?

High Blood Pressure

So I am dying... Yes, Yes, we are all dying grasshopper, but apparently, at any moment my heart is fixing to burst asunder like a beer left too long in the freezer. I know this because of a trip to Shopper's Drugmart. It's the classic story of putting your arm into a hole where it doesn't belong. I'm killing time, waiting for a friend to complete a purchase so I slip my left arm into the old blood pressure reader and there I am looking at 15852 over 964 or something and being encouraged to ask my pharmacist to help me 'through the maze'. A maze. This is what they call estate planning these days. Tomorrow. I'm going back to test the other arm.

London

Was in London last week. First thing you want to do when you get there is get yourself an Oyster Card. Far as I can make out, it's a smart card that you top up from time to time. Best part is that it calculates your journeys, so you never end up paying more than the cheapest fare you were entiteld to if you had bought it at the start of the day. So for example, if you would have been better off buying a day pass. And even better, bus journeys are a pound a piece. Be careful though, it is not for use on some Thameslink services despite what a bearded eejit at King's Cross station might tell you. While I'm on the toursit advisory board here, you can pick up a sim card from Carphone Warehouse for ten pounds, so bring your phone.

Other things to do: get yourself a can of Carlsberg Special Brew (or some less plebian equivalent), head into Regent's Park with a good book (eg Peter Carey's Theft), and prop under a tree for the afternoon.

Word Up!

In the beginning was the word ... What's in a name? Really, I am just trying to hide from... well that would give it away, wouldn't it? So If you are reading this, don't tell them I'm here. A mystery story then.