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well the flight was good, or as good as 10.5 hours in a plane can be. due to space concerns, the rest of this post will be in point form:

• the title translates to “I don’t speak the common language”, the common language meaning mandarin. damn northern bigots. i’m using the phrase a lot these days. i don’t think they run into a lot of non-mandarin speaking chinese-looking people here.
• saw the forbidden city, which isn’t all forbidden these days, except for the parts under reconstruction. it was all very amazing, in an incomprehensible, mind blowing sort of way. that gift shop? used to house concubines. things like that.
• saw the summer palace, which the empress dowager cixi financed with money skimmed from the military. nice work, cixi. if you saw the last emperor, she’s the bitch who bites it at the beginning.
• traffic is insane, in a mad max meets nascar sort of way.

tips for travellers to beijing:

• don’t breathe the air. trina and i have been holding our breath since we got here. the air is so bad that you can’t see blue sky. even inside our room, it smells like truck exhaust.
• don’t drink the water. just don’t. people here seem to substitute beer for water, which has been working fine for us.
• bring imodium. enough said about that.

unfortunately, flickr images are blocked by the great firewall (but not the flickr website), but i’ll try to post images anyway.

I can’t remember if I posted about the penis restaurant yet, but I’m worried what might come up on slanty if I search for ‘penis’ so I’m going to risk a double post..

So I barely made it here. Why? You may ask that. But just once. Or maybe twice if I’m not really listening. Or perhaps speak loudly and you could also ask Mr Fermented Hops and Mr Fireball the same question, and after a bit of a wander you may end up at the same place. Or not. Clear the bottles from infrontame and that could help. Or not. Perhaps. But that’s besides the point.

I can’t see any down side to this. Really. Can you? I mean, Mr Tesla may have been on to something. Certainly he was during Red Alert. Or maybe he wasn’t. Think of the Energizer Bunny. What’s to become of him if we have wireless powers? I mean, what’s to stop electric cars from zooming around the place, powered by a coil at every street corner, I mean…..well…..that can’t be bad? I mean….gawd….imagine….now. Just now. Imagine. Now. Just like right now. You’re down to your last little bit of Fireball (sad but true), you’re also down to your last couple beers (I’m speaking as if this is happening right now, which it is). So what’s you gonna do? Like in the Beastie Boys song. Not Sabatoge, we’ll save that for another night. Not like Intergalactic, which is where I predict myself to be in about 20 minutes. More like Whatcha Whatcha Gonna Do, Gonna Do? You gonna….well….take that last little bit of Fireball (oh man, I just did…and I’m actually, truely all done. I let the last couple drops fall on my tongue to savour the sweet syrupy taste second before typing this). Now….hang on, I’m still savouring……ok….where was I…..You get in your car. Cause….you know….that’s the right thing to do after savouring your last sweet, sweet drops of Fireball. But it’s all good, cause your car, it’s all computer controlled. AND it’s powered by coils at every corner. Or even…powered by the streetlights that line your streets. Light at night and power emitting. It makes me shiver.

Just imagine.

Your car.

Can drive you.

Under it’s own un-ending power.

To anywhere you want.

With unlimited energy.

Even…..

….to the liquor store that I so desperatly need to go to cause I’m out of Mr Fireball and down to my last couple bottles of Mr Beer.

I mean.

COME ON!!!!!

WHERE IS THE TECHNOLOGY WHEN YOU NEED IT!!!!!!!!

…..maybe I can harness the powers of my cats to drag me there instead. Here kittykittykitty….

“99 bottles of beer on the wall,
99 bottles of beer.
You take one down,
Pass it around….”

Some moderately exciting news today as I passed my driving test. It was my second go at the test, my first taking place here in Belfast, my second in the slightly remote more Lisburn. I only mention this as Belfast (Balmoral road) only has a 38% pass rate, which apparently drops to around 20% for first time drivers. Not too surprising since I failed for, among other reasons, dry steering my car during a 3 point turn. That’s a full fail for that by the way, I could have done everything else right (which I didn’t) and still failed. This is especially tough to swallow as our car doesn’t have power steering, and the roads here are very narrow. I feel like Austin Powers trying to perform this manoeuvre correctly.

Lisburn clocks in at a whopping 47% pass rate, which isn’t actually the reason I went there. I booked myself in to that particular testing center as you have to wait only 2 weeks to fail in Lisburn. It’s about 2 months in Belfast, and I needed to pass before August 1st when my Canadian license is no longer valid. So, mission accomplished! Let’s roll…

In other weird news, try and make sense of this comment, as quoted when discussing the ethicality of wine coupons for repeat customers:

He told MPs it would never use loyalty cards to promote tobacco or baby formula but it would send out “wine coupons”. (slightly edited for accuracy)

So to summarise:

Wine = good
Tobacco = bad
Baby formula = bad

What am I missing here?