ISpyShanghai

It costs 1,500RMB (150 quid) to fly return from Shanghai to Seoul right now.

Good eh? I went on Friday.

Seoul is a lovely place, nestled in the mountains, on a Sunday afternoon it feels like a sleepy little village compared to Shanghai.

The nightlife is good though- all little independent bars tucked away down alleys where if they don’t have the tune you ask for, they’ll download it.

I used to live in Korea for 3 or 4 years- I forget how long exactly, this is back when I used to drink too much.

Now I’m a little older and more sensible I try not to go too crazy- in fact I have a strict rule: once the sun comes up, no more shots.

Originally I’d planned to go to the wedding of an old workmate. But it turned out to be far away, and I had a hangover that could fell a tree so I just stayed in the city and stared at the increasingly bizarre outfits of the Korean metrosexual.

The guy in the his’n’hers pink sweatshirt is the butchest looking man in the photo

It’s terrifying how camp the Korean guys look these days, terrifying. Don’t get me wrong, they pull it off and the street fashions are, well, streets ahead of Shanghai. But the levels of camp are off the scale- two examples, the guy below, Bae Yong Joon is one of the biggest stars in the country.

This image is taken from his role as spokesman (honestly, it is a man) for a cosmetics company.

and this (here on youtube) is an advert for a cellphone featuring another two popular stars. Aside from wearing outfits made entirely out of tinfoil, they come within about one Banana Daquiri away from making out at the end of the ad.

Oh and did I mention that the phone they’re advertising is called “Magic Hole“?

If you’ve never been, I really recommend a trip to Seoul- if only for the fact that walking around the place makes you feel like a manlier version of Wesley Snipes.

Walking down Jingling Lu, near(ish) the Bund on Saturday I had a sudden urge to buy a Ukulele. 

Don’t know where it came from, but it was overwhelming, like a thirst. I went into a couple of shops before finding a cheeky little yellow number.  

The asking price was 240RMB. I didn’t argue, I was in love. Anyway my bargaining power was compromised after I danced around the shop going

“Look at the little strings! And it’s covered in fruit!!” 

By the time I got home I’d picked up “Shake Rattle and Roll” (the taxi driver actually turned down his radio to listen) and now I reckon I can play a few songs reasonably well. 

This isn’t necessarily one of them:

A note on the video: Youtube is rubbish in China- takes forever to load, so I’ve also put it on a local site called Tudou (”Potato”).

It was pretty easy to do; good old Google Translate eh?

On Tudou

On YouTube.

Yellow Ukulele all covered in fruit
240RMB including bag- from a guitar shop on Jing Ling Lu (proper address to follow) 

These are great fun- 150 Baht (around 3 quid / 30 RMB) from a guy on the beach. The ring at the bottom is a little firelighter, a paper tube above that to catch the air, and away you go.

Also on youtube.

If you can’t see this video because your computer is backwards, then you probably aren’t going to enjoy the slideshows (one of Bangkok, one of Koh Samui) that I’ve got a team of farmers working on right now.

The beach at Mae Nam is pretty peaceful and the only person to come up and sell us something was the guy with these paper balloons. At the big resort of Cha Weng however, the whole sea front was packed with waves of hawkers.

Products for sale included:

• your photo with a Lizard
• A pearl / polysterene necklace 
• buckets of Thai Whiskey
• huge fireworks (they go great with the Whiskey)
• Your photo with a Monkey

This was my housewarming gift from Dingle.

The packaging says you’re only allowed to leave it running for 1 hour, but it’s easy to lose track of time when you’re watching a dog hump your laptop. 

I’ve written to the manufacturers to suggest that a 60 minute timer is added to version 2.0.

(also on youtube)

There’s a great new shop opened up near Dingle’s house- it’s called Meat Puppets and it sells all kinds of utterly useless tat.

The woman who owns the place speaks good english, which will be very useful when she’s back working in Starbucks after the business fails.

Here’s what I wrote about it for Shanghaiist:

Gadgets! Gadgets! Gadgets for all!

If there’s one business model that’s sure to ride the current economic storm, it’s a shop which sells nothing but useless gadgets.

Recently opened “Meat Puppets” on Shaanxi Lu (near JianGuo Lu) is a shop that sells gadgets such as “High School Musical” themed magic 8-balls, old-fashioned telephone receivers on a curly cord (to plug into your cell phone, obviously) and one of two awesome infra-red powered air guitars!.

Take that Credit Crunch!

Takara Tomy Air Guitar Pro – 275RMB

Takara Tomy Air Guitar Pro Acoustic (pictured) – 475RMB. 

 

One thing I didn’t mention in that post is that I bought the guitar in the picture, and then tried to make a video of myself playing the thing.

With limited success.

I hear strong rumours that there is a clip of Professor Dingle playing “Walk This Way” on his, whilst wearing superman pyjamas. Let’s wait and see if it turns up eh?

Last night I worked until 5am PROTECTING YOUR AIRPORT (I’m kind of a modern-day Spiderman) so am resting at home right now.

Woken from my slumbers this morning by the intercom being rang over and over again, I picked up the little phone and asked the guy at the gate what he wanted:

Food delivery
It’s not mine
Food delivery
I didn’t order!
Food delivery
But I didn’t..!

No matter, the security guard helpfully buzzed him in.

As the elevator made its way up to my floor my mind was racing:

Why aren’t Chinese security guards forced to watch “Leon” in basic training?
Can I physically overpower a 15 year old manchild in my dressing gown?
If I manager to batter him to death and throw him down the stairwell (oh that’s right, I know some moves!) will he actually have food in his bag? Would it be wrong to eat it?

Turns out he had the wrong address, and now I’m really hungry.

 
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Clever software people (like me, but presumably without a job or girlfriend) have hacked the software on lots of different Canon compact cameras. They’ve come up with new code to run which lets you play games, shoot RAW photos (don’t ask, it’s geeky) and…..shoot timelapse photography! 

So where I used to use a setup like this: 

I can now use one like this:

To make videos like this (sorry about the darts being in the way):

Did you spot

• Our resident American waving an American flag?
• A canoodling couple?
• WoAiZhongGuo in a suit?

If you’ve got a Canon camera (like my Ixus 50 / SD400), the hacked software is called CHDK.
Basic info about it is here. Lots of technical help here and the timelapse script I’m using is this one.

We haven’t had one of these for a while, and I like them even if you might not.

It’s the sunset over my neck of the woods, with a Sun Jar in the foreground. The idea of the Sun Jar is that when it’s light, the solar cell stores the energy, and when it gets dark, an LED spits that energy back into a warm soothing glow.

It’s a canny gadget which I bought it from the same place as the beauty nose clip, at People’s Square station.

But does it work? You’ll have to watch the video to find out.

(Also available on Youtube)