ISpyShanghai

The second monthly column is out in “That’s Shanghai” (first one is here)- pandemonium has broken out on the streets as people rush to get a copy, if you are one of those who was injured in the melee than I apologise.

Click to see it largee sizee

You’ll notice that there’s a photo of a shoe included in the column that I’ve never put online. That’s not because I’m fobbing you off with the dregs, it’s because I made a solemn oath not to have any overlap between the this site and that page.

That, however, is proving tough since I normally see something cool- take a photo, write about it within the next day or so.

Or receive an email of some shoes, sit on them for about 3 months and then soak up all the praise when I think the person who sent it in might have stopped reading. Whichever.

Instead I now have to decide whether something would look better online or printed (i.e. whether I can write 100 words about it, or stretch it to 250).

Maybe it would be better to take an approach where the column is more of a roundup / rewrite / extended Director’s cut with deleted scenes version of the blog?

Basically what I’m fishing for here is comments that say:

Swiss- I don’t care how often you recycle the same old tat.
And what’s more, I promise I won’t tell the editor of That’s Shanghai that you’re doing it. Inshallah

( The link to leave a comment is on your right).

At the risk of looking like a complete attention whore (Emma says I’m more like an ‘attention stripper’) – let me just say

LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!

This is the latest edition of That’s Shanghai- a magazine for expats in Shanghai, and is the first one to carry my new regular column. 

One thing I’ve learnt writing this is that the editor of the magazine has to meet with a Communist party apparatchik in a windowless, underground room before every issue.

With a cigarette clenched tightly between thin lips, the official will read through all of the copy (that’s magazine speak for “words”) for any dodgy content. When I received a call to say that a part of the column had fallen under the censors’ red pen I was fascinated to see which bit it could be.

• The section where I alledge that blind masseurs are sexual predators?
• The allegation that taxi drivers in Pudong are all crooks?
• The many calls to overthrow the capitalist roaders and fight for a true Marxist state?

Continue Reading »

A couple of new things here at ISpy geared towards newcomers.

First I’ve started using the whole tag system that the kids are into these days. The idea is that if you “tag” posts with words that show the content.
So if I was writing about my pets, I’d use the word t*rtles.

That way you get a “tag cloud” (do try to keep up) of topics and people don’t have to snuffle around looking for stuff they might like.

Like this:

Tag Cloud

Wilkommen! (what's with the rug burns?)

Secondly, at that the bottom of most posts there are now links to a couple of related posts.
So, for example, if you’ve just been watching a video I made, you might want to click for a related post and watch another one (although I admit, that is unlikely).

Any questions? There’s coffee and snacks in the back.

I’m at my wits end with this blogging lark.

Don’t know if it’s the same when you try to leave a comment but every time I attempt to update a post, add a new photo, change the way something looks, or basically do anything at all- the thing crashes and I get an error message.

Being a computer geek I’ve been trying all kinds of things (I got shell access to look at the CPU usage, have optimised the MySQL tables, reloaded the admin code from scratch, deleted spam comments, changed themes, ran traceroute etc. etc.) and I just don’t know what the problem is.

Thinking about moving to another host, or even ditching wordpress and trying something else. What a palaver. Anyway, I don’t want to whinge…and in fact I’ll stop.

Here then (hopefully) are a few more of my favourite photos from Beijing.

Olympic TV Tower

This building looked pretty cool- it overlooked the Olympic Green: the Watercube, Birds Nest training track for the athletes etc.

Unusually for an Olympics, the ticket security was done before you could get to into the whole green- so instead of having anyone with a vague interest milling around the area, you’ve just got ticketholders on their way to an event.

McDonalds (who have the only ‘restaurant’ in the green) aren’t best pleased apparently, neither are other sponsors who built big exhibition sites for casual observers to ‘absorb the brand experience’ and all of that twaddle.

To me it made good sense to keep the riff-raff out, although inevitably, the odd one slips through the net:

WoAi Refuels

If you ever find yourself at an Olympics, I highly recommend taking your national flag with you.

After the 100m final anyone with a Jamaican flag outside the stadium was mobbed by people wanting their photo taken with a genuine Jamaican. Wearing a big Union Jack around my neck meant photo ops galore all day, including one with Miss World as we left the stadium (she was nice enough but would she buy me a Typewriter for my birthday?), and even though I didn’t see any British success (wish I’d been there yesterday to see the Women’s 400m!) it still felt good to be one of Her Majesty’s representatives. God Save The Queen what what?

The top three medalling nations at Beijing 2008?

Birds nest

In non-Olympics news, the turtles were fine when I got back from Beijing.

Once you put them in a big water tank, those things take care of themselves- no food, no changing the water for two days in the heat and they still look happy as larry. When I was in England, Emma took them to the vets when one of them had a slight cough, but I reckon the laidback approach is best.

If only Amphibian upkeep was an olympic event.

Since I’ve started writing for a website called Shanghaiist, I’ve become a hugely, hugely important figure on the Shanghai nightlife scene.

Why, only last night I attended the opening of a new restaurant called Laurel And Hardy’s Prime Rib where the free wine flowed like water, and me and some other very impotent people eventually baffled the Chef fella into giving us some free beef.

an important friend of mine at a very important event for important people

And yet I still can’t manage to secure a coveted VIP card (40% off drinks, a free party hat on your birthday etc.) for my local bar- The Spot. My boss has this card and uses every opportunity to taunt me with it. They gave it to him just because he plays football with some Germans at the weekend, behaviour which should be punished rather than rewarded if you ask me.

The last time they invited my boss to one of their special VIP events (free booze, mechanical robots to do your every bidding) I wrote to The Spot to ask them if there was room for a loyal and true customer who lives just around the corner and promises not to eat all the nibbles. No dice.

So I now pronounce from my blogging tower that no-one should ever, ever go to The Spot on Tongren Lu. All of their beer has rats in it, and the kitchen is staffed by malnourished Bengali street children, snatched from their mother’s teat*. They will rue the day they refused to give free stuff to me!

*alledgedly

Another gem from the Police English translation department:

If you’re a regular reader (hi Mum!) you might have noticed that I take a lot of photos on the subway. I hate it.

Maybe because of the reputation of the Tokyo subway (where pepper spray is issued as standard to any female passenger under 35) I always feel like a pervert when I take my camera out in a packed carriage.

“Relax everyone” I want to shout
“I’m not taking photos of chesty ladies, high-heeled shoes or schoolkids. I’m a blogger, trying to be funny.”

Perhaps I need a special blogging hat.

I know, I know, it’s no photo of two guys passed out in puddles of their own urine and in fact unless you know what “puff” means in British speak, it’s probably not even funny (it’s a slang term for a man who keeps his change in his purse. If you catch my drift)- but I’ve been busy.

Mondays I have a Chinee lesson, with a teacher who is obsessed with Princess Diana and will find any way to work her into the conversation, Tuesday I play football- or at least chase around after the ball whilst people around me play football, Wednesday I’m back on with the Chinese, trying to work out the Mandarin for:

“Yes, yes, she was the Princess of all of our hearts, do you need a tissue?”

and then tonight I’m going to buy England shirts in preparation for tomorrow’s big Women’s International against Germany.

Lovely Puff snack-  airport employee supermarket 1.2RMB
Women’s World Cup tickets- Hongkou Stadium 100RMB on the door