random thoughts from gay Shanghai

Well, I finally bought my Book Club book over lunch, i plan to start it on Sunday, then I'll have just a week, which should be enough. It's not that long. You'll surely see a post about it later!

So tonight, hard liquour and beautiful boys (or the other way around) and tomorrow Godfather II!!! Yes, we're finally going to do it. I hope my hangover won't be to big, because the cause is just and the road will be long. Over 3 hours long! 

That'll be my weekend for you...

3 more days of Chinese at home and then we're switching to English. That'll be interesting, i wonder how we are going to have fights??!!

The Fall season is in the air and i'm getting all excited - how can I not? It's Shanghai's most beautiful and pleasant season and it signals the end finally to the days of heat, sweat and AC. I'm looking forward to going for walks in the afternoon or going to the park and getting some sunshine.

In the meantime, where are the typhoons? Something's off with the weather these days, really. No idea what's going on. It's actually quite cool for this time of year - though you won't hear me complaining about that.

Autumn is the most melancholic of seasons, sometimes I think of myself like that as well. 

What's your favourite season?

Believing someone or something is a choice you make. You can never be sure, so in the end you decide if you believe it or not.

So I choose to believe, it's what my heart tells me. But my thoughts, i have to control them!

The most-read post on this blog is the one called "my interest" (about 9% of all views). Let's take a look at the content again:

Going over my blog posts, we can safely say my interests are:

reading, singing, drinking, eating, fucking, thinking, writing...

I wonder if it has anything to do with the f-word in the body?

The world today...

Thank god the weekend is coming, i'm still tired from Belgium's victory over New-Zealand. Who knew that getting drunk in a football stadium was so much fun? And I felt very straight...

The Olympics have been here for 4 days now and i'm getting more and more into them, it's really fun watching them at night after you get home from work...

Of course, Chinese commentators are always focusing on the competitions with Chinese guys and all the gold medals (how did China become number 1 in weightlifting??) make Chinese go nuts. Interesting post from James Fallows, where he argues it's normal. Japan TV broadcast Japanese doubles badminton and Korean TV a soccer game with Koreans.

It is very different for us Belgians though. Usually so few Belgians participate, we're used to watching all the other events instead. Of course if a Belgian guy or gal pops up anywhere we will also watch it on TV (Oh for the days of Henin and Clijsters!!) Needless to say, these Olympics look like a disaster for Belgium, all i read from the athletes are things like "I'm proud to have made it to the semi finals" Well...

Tomorrow is Belgium - New-Zealand football match, and I'm going to watch it!! Go Red Devils!

I made a new culinary discovery tonight: Sour and Spicy Prawn Kiwi Salad, here's a recipe:

Ingredients:

2 kiwis, cut in stripes
15 whole shrimp (live or fresh-frozen)
juice of 1/2 lime
fresh ginger, cut in slices
4 tbs. vegetable oil
2 tbs. rice wine
tabasco
pepper
salt


Cooking method:
1. Begin with the shrimp, the tedious part. Take of the heads and then with a small scissor cut open the sheel along the belly towards the tail. This way the shell comes off easily. Clean the shrimp.
2. In a pot, pour the vegetable oil and the ginger slices. Heat on medium fire. The ginger is for flavouring the oil, so leave it in a bit longer. This is why you should slice the ginger, big pieces won't burn.
3. When the ginger flavours have come out, put in the shrimp and stir. Add the rice wine and continue stirring for a minute or two. Drain the shrimp, and put in the fridge to cool down.
4. In a salad bowl mix the shrimp, kiwi, lime juice, and 10 drops of tabasco. Season with pepper and salt. Voila!

I have to say, this was a goodlooking, tasty and healthy salad. Went great with the cold noodles in peanut sauce! I hope you enjoy it too.

From a rather worldly, but deliciously cynical Chinese.........

Guidelines for foreign reporters covering the Beijing Olympics

1) On arrival, set the scene by writing a few nice things about the infrastructure—the high rises and the multilane highways, the interchanges. Developmenty sort of stuff.

2) Make an amusing, self-deprecating comment about your inability to speak or read the funny language they have in China. Play down the fact that you are dependent on a translator for quotes and newspaper reading. Never admit to getting story ideas or borrowing quotes from the China Daily.
 
3) Get story ideas and borrow quotes from the China Daily. Make sure you do this discreetly. For background only.
 
4) Now for reportage. After saying the nice things  about the new buildings, get your translator to find a Beijing yam seller whose slum was knocked down to make way for the Olympic badminton hall. Do a few paras on him, and how all the money thrown at the Games is not helping the poor, and how terrible the huge income gap is. Make sure you write at least three times as much about the yam seller whose slum was pulled down as you do about all the new apartments, new metro lines, the growth in car ownership, the expanding health insurance and all the other good news about China that nobody in the west really wants to know about.
 
5) Say how horrible the air in Beijing is, even if it isn't on the days you are there. Everybody says Beijing air is horrible, so play along.

6) The  political bit. Interview a token party member, but reword him subtly to make it sound like he is just spouting the party line. Bend the translator's words to fit—it'll be rubbish English anyway. (Ditto in all quote treatment). Then find a good Chinese, one who is fluent in English, has lived in America or Britain, and is prodemocracy. Give them lots of space, let them sing. Martin Lee types, but preferably younger and female, for the mugshot. If you can get an interview with the Olympic artist, Ai-whatsisname, who is an anti-Commie quote machine, give him full throttle. Hopefully, he hasn't been arrested yet.

Lastly, please remember: Chinese who love their country are called  'nationalists.' Never use this word for Americans, French, Tibetans and other civilized peoples who love their country or territory. When demonstrators protest over Tibet they are acting in a heartfelt, spontaneous way, waving pretty flags you would be happy to see woven into your granny's bedspread. When Chinese counter-demonstrate, they are always 'bussed in,' the mood is 'ugly', and they are draped in intimidating red flags that can be made to look a bit Hitler Jugend-ish with the right kind of photo. (They probably did arrive in buses as this is the cheapest way of moving numbers of not-very-well-off people around, but you don't need to prove the insinuation that the regime laid on the vehicles). Beijing is always a 'regime,' by the way, and is not to be confused with western 'governments.' (But: Hong Kong is an exception. Because it was under benign, enlightened British dictatorship for a long time, it cannot be a 'regime.' 'Regime' only applies to dictatorships in rubbish countries). 

That's about it. Don't be deceived by all that friendly smiling and optimism, that's just a front. It's your job, with your long days of experience of the Far East and your fluency in a language spoken by nearly 0.005% of the locals, to get under the radar and ferret out the truth. Did I mention how bad the air in Beijing is?'

Must have eaten something really bad yesterday, but for the love of god i can't think of what it might be. Been running to the toilet all day and my stomach feels like it wants to travel upwards all time...

Any tips for a speedy recovery?

But I have never been sure that we are all talking about the same when we are talking about love. Perhaps real love is too boring to talk about.

So what is the real, the essence of that little thing called love? Is it the zsa zsa zou of the beginning, that passion, those fireworks and thousands of butterflies in your stomach? Or is it the profoundness of realizing you want to and will spend your life with this person who seems to love you so much.?

I guess we'll never know, because love is a feeling and those are subjective. So indeed, are we talking about the same thing when we are talking about love? Even if you're the two people in the relationship.

That's why talking about your feelings and thoughts is important, right?

Instant noodles in tomato beef soup for lunch today, what are you having?

A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively opposes an established opinion, policy, or structure. The term can be used to refer to a number of types of dissidents, including political, social, and militant dissidents.

I'm reading the book The Dissident right now, which tells about an artist from the 90s Beijing "scene" who goes to the U.S., stays with an American host family while he's supposed to be creating new work. The Chinese "dissident" becomes the American "revolutionary".Transformations is a central theme of the book, as for example with the photographer and the artist. Who's art is it? Things shift according to your perspective - whether it's time, place, ideas - so nothing is ever 100%.

Giving names to things is really a strange occurence. It creates narratives which can influence a person or even a group of people, a society. Think of the redundancy debate in the 90s. All of a sudden, fired wasn't the word used anymore. Give it less confronting name and the problem doesn't seem so terrible anymore.

I'm always wondering who gives the Chinese names to western people. Everything a new person emergence on the world scene, they will need to make a Chinese name for him/her, like with Obama. Who decides? 

I like the Chinese word for euthanasia though: 安乐死, dying happily in peace. 

Well, I hope this post wasn't too much for you on a Thursday afternoon :-) Going for Hunan food tonight! Spicy!!

I'm swamped today, so no time for thinking or writing anything but work-related stuff. Maybe tonight after dinner...

According to Realage.com my real age is 19.8, not 29.6. Not bad huh?

There's still room for improvement though: I should eat even more fruit and veggies, work out more and floss more. But hey, nobody's perfect, right?

Going over my blog posts, we can safely say my interests are:

reading, singing, drinking, eating, fucking, thinking, writing...

Oh and I love this quote by myself

I'm a circle and I always come back to myself.

So I read all these books and then forget about them. So from now, I'll write sth about each book i finish reading on this blog, isn't that a nice resolution? (Y'all say yeah now)

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what yous et down will never be read. Not by any other person and not even by ourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.

That's from the Blind Assasin, by Margaret Atwood.

I've always considered that because there is always the brain in between events and writing down of them, for sure, you will excuse yourself in your diary. That's what the brain does, it makes you forget about the stuff which is too confronting so you can get on with your life and not start wallowing in sorrow. Memories are funny things - just watch Memento, what a classic!

The Sisters Chase from the book grew up like free spirits and it looked as if they had all the opportunities in the world. But instead of the world opening up, it closed down on them. Fate, that blind assassin, did them in. But what made it easier to bear is that they both created spaces of freedom, Iris with Thomas and Laura with God. Can we really ask for more in life?

 Here's a bonus pic...

This place has the great couscous on Dagu Lu in Shanghai. Be sure to stop by

Just finished work, so i'm off to the gym. Then i'm making scallops for dinner. That'll be nice.

Maybe another post later tonight. If you're lucky :-)

I was planning to start writing my diary again, but in the end, writing a blog is more convenient these days and it also lets you share with other people, so Let's try this one more time.

The couscous I had last night was the best ever! We went to Haya Mediterranean restaurant on Dagu Road after some serious "I smell rasperberry jam" wine tasting with A. Definitely want to go there again, the taste was incredible. Or perhaps I should learn how to make couscous myself, another thing to add to the list :-))

It's Sunday afternoon again, the end of the weekend is near, but the next weekend is also closer by than EVER before. Always something to look forward to. J. is still out of the office next week, so it should be OK, i'll be able to do my job and work on my projects in peace and quiet.

So routine, it really doesn't suit me. Every time I start getting bogged down in some kind of routine, I start feeling annoyed and start worrying that life like this doesn't make sense and it all doesn't add meaning. But then, like yesterday, A. and I have the perfect Saturday afternoon and, like this morning, I visited a part of Shanghai I hadn't been in for a long time, and all feels well again.

Feeling relaxed and happy.

I've been so busy at work, I haven't written in over 2 months now. However, traffic keeps coming to my blog, which has led me to believe the following:

It doesn't matter if you write or not, people visit your blog.

Weird...

Anyway, get in touch with me on facebook under my "real name" Koen Vandecaveye. Hope to meet all you readers there.

 K.

It's been like a rollercoaster lately, so busy I've neglected this blog for some time.

Busy at work since the promotion (I guess that's what happens after you get promoted and your director wants to get you ready to be Marketing Director in one year's time... My colleague's leaving, so I have all the enquiries to reply (up to 3 or 4 a day!), I have loads of marketing projects my director gave to me (online, in magazines, networking etc.), I'm still working on many operation related projects, I'm looking for an intern and training my assistant. Anyway, sometimes it's a bit crazy, but the things is to relax, finish one thing at a time and keep breathing.

The weekend was great though, very relaxing. Lots of heroes on Saturday and loads of reading on Sunday (I went to the library!!, thinking of getting a subscription where I can borrow the books and take them home with me, only 25RMB extra), went to the gym did some further cleaning in the kitchen and ironed a huge pile of clothes.

Yesterday, S. came home, so we had some fun :-)) It's nice to have him back...

Ok, still loads of stuff to do, gotta go!