I wrote this Inner Mongolian stand up routine. You wouldn’t get it.

So what is it with people walking in bike lanes??? Are they called walking lanes???!!! No.  So I’m like “ah wheres your bike” . Not to their faces.

This post starts out good but I don’t like the end. Writing in detail about sweets is lazy.

Who is the king of the nuts?  Nuts are big here. Huge. Every shop, every supermarket, heck (heck!?) even ever street corner has nuts for sale.  Its pretty simple for me.  The cashew is the nut king.  Servings of cashews in the west tend to be pathetic. A tiny bag with ten nuts for 3 or 4 euro.  Here, although not available loose, the prepacked bags are hefty. Very satisfying. Of course there is competition form the pastachio, but its his insistence of remaining in the shell that takes some points away. Way to much work.

Any small snack that you cant just open the packet and tip directly into the mouth are never going to earn regale status. M&Ms? great. Skittles. Tip the whole bag directly in there yes please. Opal fruits??? Individually wrapped!!!!. Chewits, I love you, but your wrapping is bringing me down.

Yes We Can

The soft drink cans here have the old style, incredibly satisfying opening mechanism where one lifts the ring and peels back a tear dropped shaped slither of aluminum rather than the more aggressive western style lift and puncture action that has been in use since I was a child.

Recalling the old ways reminded me of a time circa 93 when my cousin and I both had cans of cola (with the aforementioned opening mechanism, the only tie between these two antidotes) and decided to play a game. The game we settled on was pretending to watch Jurassic Park on video. Our imaginations couldn’t even stretch to watching it on a big screen, we wanted glamorous panned and scanned vhs.

My cousin is a soon to be married, soon to be home owning, education professional.

I went on to tape Jurassic park of the telly and create my own video box art.  I later purchased the dvd in a two desk set with its inferior sequel Jurassic Park:  The Lost World. Ten months later I purchased it again as part of the Jurassic Park: The ultimate collection 4 dvd box set set which included the first two movies and the fun if light weight third entre in the series, Jurassic Park 3 and a bonus forth disc of extra features exclusive to the box set. It is worth noting at this stage that I owned both sequels on vhs.

So whats next for me??

A quick scan of on-line retailer amazon shows no forthcoming release  of the movies on Blu-ray, but once they inevitable “drop” I will buy them. If only for the new and exclusive extra features.

In the mean time I’m going to pretend to watch the much talked about, never going to happen, Jurassic park 4. On vhs.

Legs.

Tried to explain fake tan to a Chinese girl today. She didn’t understand.  She could speak English.  But I can speak English and I don’t understand either.

Lies.

Maps of the world are all wrong in China. Looking at one, Europe  is on the left hand side, with Ireland the last country on the extreme left. Asia stretches across the left and this places China in the middle with the pacific and the Americas taking their place to the right. Blatant propaganda. Everyone knows Europe is at the center of the world. China sits to the right and America to the left. Thats the way the world is. This revision, placing China in the center seems to be some sort of attempt to establish China as the best and most powerful country in the world!!!! Its going to take more than poor geography to do that. Maybe if they had second biggest and fastest growing economy in the world, or the biggest army, or had America heavily in debt to them  they could make the claim.

Yeah I’d like to see that.

Power Corrupts

Now that I’m a teacher and academic, and “English expert” (thats what the wonderful Chinese Government class me as ,and they are never wrong) I have a power that I only ever viewed as a student in my prolonged education. That is, the power to grant a small child access to the toilet. One thinks that if you need a piss you should be allowed to piss, its natural, no one should be allowed to deny you a piss. Its cruel and potentially dangerous to make some one hold it in. I never understood the idea of asking permission to urinate, sure as a courtesy, tell the teacher you are going to the toilet but to place the relaxation of your sphincter under pressure in the hands of another is madness….and  yet as a teacher your first instinct is to deny the child access to the toilet. As soon as you hear “teacher teacher w.c???!!!” (w.c is the english phrase they use for toilet, it stands for water closet, and is used on building plans to label the bathroom. why they dont use toilet, I don’t know. Years ago, when looking at plans I asked the man who works with my father what w.c stood for. He told me waste chamber. I believed him for years. I still kinda do) you say “no sit down” and it takes me about five seconds to realise what I was asked and I then say “yeah sure w.c all you want,  get out of here kid”

They are probably just going to mess and get away from me for a few minutes. Which is also far enough. Everyone should be allowed to get away from me for a few minutes, its as natural and as essential as having a piss.

Bathroom fixings

The paper inserts in toilet rolls. They dont exists here. The roll just rolls in on itself to form a solid cylinder of soft tissue.

I dont think I will ever get use to the crazy way things work here.

Also what do small children make pretend telescopes out of?? They dont. Thats the problem.

Dummies

In clothes shops all the dummies are western, there are none representing beautiful eastern people.  Racist. Mannequin manufactures are racist.

Lies

Pointy lamp shade  hats???? Haven’t seen one.  Nobody wears them.

Haven’t seen one paddy field.

Dragons? Nope. Not one.

 

How is China Different Cont.

The @ is above the number 2 on the keyboard.

Can’t get sausages.

Everything is in Chinese.