You know, I’m studying via USQ this year. For those not in the know, that’s the abbreviation for University of Southern Queensland. The main campus is located in Toowoomba, a smaller city in Qld. When I’m having a panic attack about some detail I neglected to get sorted, such as paying the fees on time, or finding out where my exam centre is, I ring the USQ (via Skype). The call gets through to one of the service desks there — USQ has a lot of overseas students so they’re appropriately staffed for it.
My call always seems to go through to a middle-aged, country-accented sounding woman named Val or Pam. It’s a comforting sound. Here, 9/10 native English voices I hear are N.American.
More to the point, Val always knows what the score is. She is calm, efficient and all-knowing. If I got to choose what the first AI name, personality and voice would be, it would be V.A.L.

In a bid to make this site popular again, here is the first in a series of *Saucy Dames of the Orient*.

The Federal Government will use the Budget on Tuesday to outline plans for a major review of Australia’s taxation system.

The 18-month review will look at all aspects of federal, state and local government taxes, other than the GST.

The review team will be led by Treasury head Ken Henry and will include prominent academics and business leaders.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan has told Channel Nine changes are needed to ensure Australia’s economic prosperity into the future.

“We will look at personal taxation, we will look at the transfer payments system, we will look at how that effects individuals, how it affects families, how it affects retirees,” he said.

“We’ll look at–we. will. set aside large amounts of funding in preparation for. . . The Arrival. Vast nitrogen-filled domes will be constructed in the Woomera desert as part of Stage One. A new plant form known as Plankflora will be sewn into the Australian soil to make the air more breathable.

“It will be a comprehensive takeover.”

Mr Swan says the Government is likely to take a series of reforms to the next election.

“Certainly we will go to that election with a–_New Overlord_,” he said.

“I can’t predict what the review might say … I mean the review might say that–_All Hail Zeta Reticulum!_.”

Opposition treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull supports the review but has questioned the Government’s move to appoint the supra-intelligent, 2.3m tall praying mantis named Vasscorm, to lead the review team.

He has told ABC TV’s Insiders program the Government’s review cannot be considered independent.

“Vasscorm is a very smart man(tis) and we all respect him, but he is the head of the Treasury and the bureaucratic side of things,” he said.

“One would think that a review of this kind should be independent so this looks like a very in-house and insect controlled review.”

First the food. I really like food from the different parts of China. I feel like I’m over Korean food. I guess it’s just a thing of mass. China is massive and made up of a bunch of different cultures that have their own food. Maybe it’s the result of being in Korea for some time now, but the Sichuan style of food, (spicy) is probably the kind I like best.

In this particular night we went to the appropriately titled Sichuan Restaurant. On the right is a kind of fried potato dish, lending further weight to my theory that chips are universal and that you could go to Mars and they would be eating chips there too. On the left, according to girlfriend with e-dictionary in hand, is a dish entitled, ‘an excess of saliva’, which we’ll shorten to ‘drool’ for the purposes of this blogpost. It was chicken in a spicy -hot oil. It really did make you drool! Very tasty once you get over the not-so-western style of chopping–they cut straight through the bone rather than filleting or sectioning the way folks like me are used to.

I did several of the touristy things the first time around when I was there in late Feb but there was one that had eluded the tackyness-magnet. There’s an underground train that runs under the river which was like _Journey to the Centre of the Earth_ meets Star Trek: The motion picture meets Boards of Canada’s album, Geogaddi.

I think it’s worth noting down that weather-wise, late April was a perfect time to be in Shangers. It was warm but not humid and the nights were just nice.

For a day or two we got out of the central city to a place an hour na a half away on the bus, Xitang. It’s a small place and not as on the map as Hangzhou or Suzhou. Xitang’s claim to fame is that a few scenes from Mission Impossible 3 were shot there. In several of the restaurants and shops you can see fotos of Tom Cruise and cast standing around.

Personally I found it interesting to see how the place filled up with the new Chinese Upper-middle class on Saturday morning. there’s all these people with money in their pocket in china and now all they need is Disney Land.

In any case, Xitang was a nice little place and the canals didn’t smell.

_*Update:*_ Comments n’ pings are now enabled. Comment til ur little hearts are content. Comment til you can comment no more. Comment like it’s going out of style.

Doing a little shopping in Carrefour supermarket at Zhongshan Park on Saturday night and Je said it seemed unusually quiet. Mostly it looked like young people in there, which may have had something to do with it being a saturday night. In any case, some of the chinese people are boycotting because France <3’s Tibet. We’ll be going back to Carrefour today because it’s so much nicer to shop when it’s not so crowded.
I had been thinking about going to see some of the Olympic Games for no other reason than girlfriend may still be here then, and it’d be interesting to see if the whole shithouse goes up in flames, as Jimbo Morrison would say.

Went to a restaurant last night that had english translation on the menu. Here are some of the more choicer dishes:
* The Beijing onion explodes the fat cow
* The cotton rose one is fragrant
* burns the beef (I had this - beef and potato curry - very good!)
* Characteristic cowpea
* Burns the pigeon
* blood is flourishing
* Heineken
* Fried icecream
* Chaozhou style understands stove fish
Plus the above title of this entry, which is what I think I will call my band when I finally make a band.

(ref The Count & cookie monster.)

One thing I always wondered about Cookie Monster was, Where do the cookies go? Is there a hole there or something? And what kind of biscuits are they, because they break pretty easy.

I was watching the (1992) Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula last night. It seemed rather dated. Where is Winona Ryder these days? Where is Keanu Reeves these days? They are, as it is so succinctly put, ‘past it’. In four years, 1992 will be twenty years ago. That’s alarming because to me 1992 seems like Not That Long Ago. The 70s– now that was a long time ago, it’s okay for things from the 70s to seem dated but not 1992.

The second thing that occurred to me when watching this movie, billed as ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, was how badly it sucked. What a fucking travesty of a retelling. Stoker was rolling in his grave in 1992. He’s still rolling!
Rolling.
Rolling, rolling, rolling.

Rolling.

Of course, I was right, but it’s also about other things, but feminism isn’t one of them. _Dracula_ is about a lot of things. one of them being how Roumanians want to marry your daughter and make little Roumanians — in England.

A message to Googol: work your satellites, update your images. According to the above image, my current workplace hasn’t even been built yet. That makes the image over two years old.

Another reason not to doubt the cosmic order of things: I just looked up obscure early nineties Kiwi indie band, StraightJacket Fits on BTJunkie. It had no leads but offered me the suggestion, ‘did you mean straightjacket fist’? No, but thanks. Everyone will get what they deserve. The members of Straightjacket Fits are probably selling Holdens in Dunedin these days, and so need the money. I’ll probably buy their self-titled album from some obscure Kiwi music web-shop.

The rather sinister ‘Mystery Man’ from Lynch’s movie Lost Highway.

The rather sinister Samsung Chairman, Lee Kun Hee.

The same man???

I went out and bought a mac book pro. In the last six months I’ve given away three laptops. But the philanthropic feeling wore off pretty quick and left me with the condition of mobilelessness.
The hardware itself is okay I guess. I remember back to when they changed from the Powerbook to the MBP and was not impressed with the new design. The Tibooks looked great. I thought to myself that I would pass on getting an apple laptop til they changed their look again.

However, since I got the mac mini 18 months ago, the software OS X has slowly grown on me as I got used to it. Windows has been digging its own grave for several years ago, and those smart-arsed what if Microsoft designed … things are funny because they’re true. When I got the sony vaio it was a neat looking little computer but was weighed down with a whole bunch of rubbish from companies like Norton anti-virus. It’s insulting. Even on the mac I find iTunes a little too in-my-face. And as far as I’m concerned Linux still isn’t ready to be used by normal people living normal lives.

After a couple of days of using the mbp I’m enjoying the built in webcam (great for talking to that overseas g/f on) and the quietness. I’ve d/loaded a couple of things and they’ve come screaming through (metaphorically) in that typical S.Korean way yet the laptop has made none of those ‘I’m getting busy!’ noises. The key depression depth is greater than the old sony — that’s something I’d become used to but this is nice too. The size is about the size as a normal keyboard. When it gets a bit dark in the room the keyboard starts glowing. Welcome to the 21st century.

Most of the time I’ve found trackpads on laptops to be pretty difficult to use - the one on the Vaio certainly was, so there would always be a mouse plugged into the side of it. The old jelly-bean style iBooks had really comfortable trackpad/mouse button combinations, although I never really got used to there being no right-click. The white iBooks were a step backward, the mouse button was difficult to click, and if I was only ever using someone else’s, as was the case, it’s not kosher to go messing with people’s mouse configurations. If I could’ve I would’ve set it to tap, which is what I’m doing here now, but then the mbp mouse button seems a bit easier to click anyway.
I like the multi touch idea. The two fingers for scrolling is very handy but so foar I haven’t had much need to be rotating or zooming images.

The last thing is that the socket where the power cable connects is on the left hand side which feels altogether wrongo. It is as if it was designed by someone who sits on the left hand end of the couch, who sleeps on the left hand side of the bede. For the rest of us this means having the power cord snaking around under our feet, and the (”it’s a feature too!”) power-cord slipping out of its socket rather easily. When it does come out it says there is 5 hours, 52 mins of battery power — not bad. I bought it on Wednesday April 2.

I’m watching the tv series, ‘Heroes’. It started off a bit lame but started to pick up after the point where the cheerleader attempted to vehicular-manslaughter the quarter-back. ‘Owever it does make me feel a bit inadequate because I am just a normal person with no super power. Every new character introduced seems to have something going on in that dept. As for the characters, I think I like Hiro Nakamura the best. It was pleasantly surprising to see that they kept with the two characters speaking japanese and use of subtitles. Also, the tall blonde woman because she’s so damn hot, but it’s questionable whether or not multiple-personality disorder is a superpower.

A few last things about the Chinese in Shanghai. I thought it was odd in that they’re noticably faster walkers than people here but they’d walk-walk fast through the subway then get to the escalator, get on it and then stand still. Maybe it’s still a technology that they’re getting used to and it’s considered uncouth or barbaric to continue walking when the escalator could be doing all the work for you.

TV: on the first night I watched a bit of TV. As you can imagine, TV in China suffers from a bit of fascism, however they did show 80s family-sitcom ‘Growing Pains’. It was dubbed. Expect a rash of Kirk Cameron hairstylings in the Middle Kingdom soon.

Also I got vox-popped by ICS, a newly opened foreign-language TV channel in Shangers. I watched a little bit of the TV channel and it seemed quite good. They do their own news reports and lifestyle shows. I don’t watch TV in Seoul but I’m sure there’s nothing that diverse on the telly here. I’m guessing there’s still not much more than Steven Segal movies.

I ate a lot of chinese food and most of it was really good. the girlfriend, je, who is korean brought several korean eating habits to the table, such as 1. ordering a lot 2. always wanting soup 3. always needing rice. This made for a lot of uneaten (wasted) food, but whatever, it’s not like anyone on the planet is starving or nothing.

We were fully armed with three shanghai-city travel guides. The chinese one (je speaks chinese) and the korean Lonely Planet soon got dropped for the English Lonely Planet, which due to being printed this year, was actually useful. At first we only looked at it sporadically, but then je got into it a lot more, choosing places to eat, shop and so on, according to the book. We’d get to a restaurant, she’d say “what does he recommend?” and order something according to the book. ‘He’ referred to the collective of people that write these kind of things. Man - that guy knows everything!

I can’t much go into specifics of what and where was good to eat because I left the book with her - who is still there studying. There was one place in the north of the city that was Uighur food, which was really cool. All these strange and way-interesting dudes and families sitting around on big circular tables. There was entertainment, including this Uighur dude going at it with a Uighur guitar.

Also see a short clip of it.

The French Concession area was really nice. Came across a few good cafes, delis — that kind of thing - the kind of thing it’s basically impossible to find in Seoul. Seoul only has chain stores. As far as China goes, Shanghai is pretty expensive but it’s not really the kind of thing a Westerner or someone on a 1st world income notices.

We did everything the guide said including getting a massage from some blindies at Lulu, walking around the backstreets to find the old Russian church and visiting the chinese sex museum. It was pretty heavily over-rated and next door to an aquarium that actually smelled of dead fish. But as they say, sex sells (as do smelly fish).
According to the pervs on Flickr, this sordid scene was the most popular. It’s of some dodgey bloke having it off with a blind man’s wife, while he holds the kid, oblivious to what is going on.

One place we stopped into that’s not in the book was the local branch and national headquarters for ‘wall street english’ — and english-teaching place. Je had been thinking about signing up for some courses to keep her speaking going, and more than anything, as a way of meeting chinese people (she’s just new there). when they say me there, tagging along, they seemed to feel the need to go the hard sell — as if I was the ‘rich uncle’ or something.
I’ll say this - they must have a _huge_ profit margin because that was a big place, with a lot of people learning there but they only had four native speakers on the books. It’s all done with computers, they said - which would never work in this country.

Anyway, I’ll be going back to Shangers. Mostly for the girl, but for the food too.

Architecture is something there is plenty of in Shanghai, The Pearl of the Orient is one of the modern stand-outs. The spheres look a bit like ET the Extraterrestrial’s spaceship, I fancy.

I’m very much missing warm air, wet sand and salt water. Winter has been long. It is almost over, or so it would seem. It has this way of giving you a week’s worth of hope then plunging back. It the weather report!

Go check out http://squarepusher.net/ playing his bass like a crazy man. I love those English people — when they speak and behave they seem so English.

Project “Curtains” is under way. It is about curtains. All the curtains I saw available looked shocking. Thus, with the help of a friend I got some material ordered off the Internet. You can order anything on the Internet here.
It’s red velvet. I always knew I would have red velvet curtains _one day_ in my life. I just didn’t realise it would come so soon. I am unsure of the quality of the velvet. I may end up just cutting it to size with scissors and attaching it to the wall with heatable-glue hooks.

The time has come. I am going to become a lead guitarist. that will be my profession. I’ll get a band and all the members will be adequate. They will do their thing, and I will look keenly to the other guitarist, with my Vol. turned to 1, I’ll play maybe every third or fourth chord — whatever I can manage. Then at about 3 fifths of the way through the song an opening will be made. I’ll go Whaaaa, whaa-whaaa… … .. . .. Whaaa. It’s the modest leadbreak. Nothing fancy.
I am in the midst of compiling a list of modest leadbreaks. ‘Cinnamon Girl’ by Neil Young may or may not be on there depending on what else shows up.

I would also just like to say that the character of Anton Chigurh in the movie _No Country For Old Men_ was one of the most impressive I have seen in years. Totally evil and totally impressive.

Tonight I watched _Juno_ (2007). At first I was sceptical. I thought it was going to be too cute, trying to hard but it turned out to be really nice. There was some really nice scene in there.

_cat is a 70yo man_

The last three winters I have been here, I haven’t been here for all of it. I got a three week reprieve from it this year too, but it doesn’t feel like it. Ze Vinter is really dragging out. I am tired of the feeling tenseness when stepping out.

I am liking the Depeche Mode. It is interesting that they were so big — I didn’t know that. They sold, like, 100 million records. Listening to some of their smash hits now, like, ‘Enjoy the Silence’ and there’s a lot more guitar than I thought there was in their music. I like that guy’s vocals.