Occasional Tales

It's back to that again. After threatening rain all day yesterday, the weather finally decided to get down to business last night. As is typical in most places, there's a Lunchtime Effect ("The moment lunchtime arrives, the amount of rain will increase"). Anyway, lunchtime also marks the start of the holiday since I have no classes this afternoon. I have a little business to attend to which, I hope, will assure a better future for me, although there's another year to go before that happens. And once that piece of business is out of the way, I'm then just waiting until I depart for Hong Kong tomorrow, which means the usual feelings of aimlessness, anxiety and anarchy. (All right, I couldn't think of a third word beginning with 'a'.) I've got something to amuse me, although I hate leaving it in mid air, especially when I'm on a roll with it. Time is once again messed up because the past three days have been Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Yes,...

It's a mood thing. I happened to bump into some blog a couple of days ago on which the author declared that they were kind of bored with blogging, a sentiment with which I could sympathise. Recent news has been pretty dull, and there hasn't been much else going on that isn't a repeat of the usual thing – "Spaces is down once again etc." followed by "Now Spaces is back again etc." Perhaps it's time to try a thematic blog of some sort. So far I've opted for quodlibet blogs, generally covering news, computers, dully daily life, film and book reviews, and languages and linguistics. There are enough news- (or politics-) themed blogs of varying sorts. There are blogs about computers and computing which, from the ones I've seen, appear to be little better than advertising and are seldom interesting. There are also plenty of daily life blogs, but my daily life is insufficiently interesting for that to be the sole theme on which I blog. A film blog?...

The burning barrel. The people next door seem to have been quite busy this morning. I got out my door to find them burning stuff in a barrel, and when I got back from the shops, I noticed that they had the table just near their front door set up like a shrine with pictures of a couple of people flanked by incense. Sum of the angles. From British-born Chinese Blog , there's this story about maths tests in China and England. The scary thing is that I think I can remember how to do all the things in the latter, which I'd regard as high school geometry at most. The sort of maths that kids do here at high school would probably be beyond most undergraduates at British universities. I don't know why the Chinese insist on doing such advanced maths at school level. Like learning English, it's a waste of time for large numbers of pupils here who, once they leave school, will never need calculus or advanced geometry. I still think that for most of us, logic would've been a fa...

Well, I suppose there aren't a lot of them. From A Welsh View (link in sidebar) we have the story that most of the country shares about a hundred family names. ( Most Chinese Share Just 100 Family Names ) I have quite a lot of Chens (陈) in my classes here, and there's a house just near the police station on Maiyuan Lu (麦园路) where some branch of the Chen family lived (although whether it's still theirs, I don't know). It could be a common name locally. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of Chinese surnames may have merged because various sound changes have limited Mandarin to a small number of possible syllable types. (A trip to Danwei revealed The year 2006, baby names, and surname ranks . Let it not be said that Mr Bamboo doesn't keep you informed.)

Now, which way shall I go? Bayrou refuses to back Royal or Sarkozy . Basically, without votes from Bayrou's supporters, Royal can say "Adieu!" to the presidency. But Bayrou seems to be doing this to try and maintain support for his own political party. In other words, he'll let his supporters vote as they please, but he maintains his independence of both Sarko and Ségo. The next round might be interesting, although I still think it's really Sarko all the way. Over on The Guardian's commentisfree section, there have been several entries in recent days about the election, including a number about which way people are going to vote and why. It's kind of "Normally my wife and I are left-wing liberals, but we're voting for Sarkozy because, in truth, we like a little arse violation followed by a sound spanking." While Sarko is probably going to win, I also wonder whether his prize is a poisoned chalice.

And hope they don't come over. Researchers claim to have found an Earth-like planet orbiting a star called Gliese 581 which is twenty light years away from us ( 'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away ). According to the article, the planet is 1.5 times larger than Earth, but has a year of only 13 days. (Silly factoid: if I lived on that planet I'd be almost 1200 years old; human gestation would take about 21 years.) They've probably got laws against birthdays.) Although the planet is very close to its star, Gliese 581 is quite cool compared with the sun, which makes the zone where a habitable planet might be found quite small. Would such a planet, if it has an inclined axis, have seasons? Or does it orbit Gliese 581 too rapidly for the concept of season to make any sense if there was a new one every three Earth days? Would it be possible for higher life forms to evolve there and what sort of creatures would they be? What would plant life be like?

But not the other. I missed this recent post over on Language Log. In my English, "Hurting people loved here" can only mean that the North Park Baptist Church likes to cause people pain, although I understand the other sense which is, to me, strictly American English, or the sort of inanity spouted by British journalists who seem to adopt every Americanism they hear. The church should've stuck with something like "Here to assuage the pain".

Oh now what? I had thought that MSN had got it's shit sorted. I seem to be wrong. Spaces was down again last night, no better this morning, and I find myself back here. As I've already said, I don't really want to give up on Green Bamboo . That's where I get all my traffic. I expect that GB is temporarily out of action, but this is beginning to be a repeat screening of May last year when I almost completely switched to gmail because changes to Hotmail effectively killed the service. Is the headline Voters turn their backs on Labour and Tories exactly a big surprise to anyone? A majority of voters, 54%, say the next general election should bring a change of government. Only 21% think Britain should stick with Labour. I'm with the majority on this one. Unfortunately, that means the Tories in power again. Ugh. New Labour. No, the ughness I feel for them is about the same as the ughness I feel for the Tories. No wonder [o]ne in three voters have turned their backs on L...

Eragon Eragon is one of those films I've seen in the shops for quite some time, but because it looks like another budget D&D romp, I've shied away from it. Until now. I should've kept shying. The film starred Pinocchio or one of his wooden relatives. In support of a most unenthusiastic kind was Jeremy Irons, and underused were John Malkovich as the Evil King and Robert Carlyle as his Evil Henchman. There was some pointy, bony skinny girl as Princess Ariel, and a blue dragon which was forever likely to set the wooden boy on fire. The film ended threatening a sequel, but Irons and Carlyle managed to escape that fate by dying. Poor old Malkovich got really pissed off at a tapestry at the end. He was obviously angry that he'd signed up for the sequel and couldn't get out of it without severe financial penalties. Blood and Chocolate This is another werewolf story from the makers of Underworld , but where that was not intolerable, this is. Werewolf girl meets human bo...

The crisis appears to be over. Now that Spaces seems to have got itself sorted out, and Green Bamboo is healthy once again, it's time to make this the understudy once again. With GB, I have an established brand, and if all the recent bother was merely to allow for updates there, then there seems to be no point in trying to establish an audience somewhere else. It's taken 18 months for GB to get this far, and I'm loth to try and re-establish an audience. I'll no doubt post here from time to time, but naturally, you can expect gaps.

About time to blog on something else. I mentioned the story about Eunice Spry on Green Bamboo a few weeks ago. The latest news is that she's been sentenced to 14 years in prison ( Sadistic foster mother sentenced to 14 years in jail ). And what was her motivation? Religious zealotry. She's a target a mile wide or so, although I'll refrain from using her as a stick to beat religious hypocrisy. Nonetheless, the woman's behaviour was brutal, callous and cruel, although I bet she presented a pious face to the world and even now probably can't believe that she was wrong. The Italian government failed to recover a couple of panels by Fra Angelico ( Lost altar masterpieces found in spare bedroom fetch £1.7m ). Pity because they ought to be back in Florence. Actually, given how many historical treasures Italy has, they probably thought better of reacquiring them because of the exorbitant insurance premiums. The Sarko/Ségo Show continues to rumble on in France ( Floating vot...

Spaces out, blogspot in. As you might've seen from Chris's comment to the previous post, blogspot is viewable. And there it is. Green Bamboo (that which you're reading); Iain Dale's Diary ; and all the rest. Is this compensation for the hammering that MSN Spaces is taking? I'm still hoping that Spaces will be back on Sunday or Monday, but given the quirky behaviour of Spaces, I think Chris has a point about making this my main blog. When Spaces is behaving (which was, until last month, most of the time), it's all right for my modest needs. The thing about blogspot is that so long as the proxy works, it doesn't matter either way. If Nanny blocks it again, I can carry on without the sort of disruption I face on Spaces.

First Green Bamboo; now Xin Phoenix as well. Green Bamboo is, once again, inaccessible (although if you're outside China you can probably see it). Under these circumstances, I'd normally wait out the usual three days of downtime on Xin Phoenix , but even that's off the menu. Spaces itself isn't blocked because I can still log in, but beyond that, I can go no further. There are, no doubt, other blogs as well which are being subject to the same bothersome indignity. The other thing that makes this bothersome is that Green Bamboo was disconnected at the end of last week. As the first time, it was back after three days (on the third day he rose again), but I wasn't expecting another bout of disconnection until next month. For this to happen after a week is a nuisance; and for both blogs to be down is a bloody great nuisance. I can't even come up with a coherent theory about the block. Right now, I can only view a few blogs on Spaces. Most are inaccessible. Why can ...

No Google News UK? Has the inGlorious Motherland struck again with a complete absence of reasoning. Although you can set onto Google News US, it appears that Google New UK is blocked. The page will momentarily appear and then vanish behind the ever popular "We just screwed you over" page. Actually, I gave up on Google News because the links there were frequently blocked, even to sites such as The Guardian that I could access directly. But what, exactly, is the point of blocking the UK version of Google News? How does this achieve anything apart from making Nanny look like a deranged old bat wearing a tea cosy on her head? Do the boys at SARFT think that Google News UK is full of stories about all those things that get Nanny hot and sweaty? I'll stick with The Guardian and, now and then, the Independent for news.

Dead again. Well, first I lose Internet access; then I get it back; then I lose Green Bamboo ; then I lose Internet access again. Yup, I'm online this morning, take a break, and get back to my computer only to find that I've lost Internet access. This may become a frequent occurrence. I don't know what the problem is, because June can't understand what the repairman is talking about. If he could speak English, then I could probably understand the problem and might even be able to do something about it. So until my Internet access is reliable again – flying pig day? – it looks like I'm going to be using the machine in the office a little more frequently. I need to get my passwords for my MSN accounts which, because they're complicated and new, I can't recall off the top of my head yet. As for the blog problem, Green Bamboo might well be up and running again in the next day as it was last time. Until then, Xin Phoenix has just become my main blog once more.

Green Bamboo goes awol again. It's not been a good day in Cyberia. About five minutes after I went online this morning, my connection was abruptly cut off. I thought the box under the stairs might be the source of the problem, but when a repairman came to have a look at it earlier this evening, it seems to have been some sort of software problem. I tried to log on to Green Bamboo . Could I? No. I was able to log on to my other Spaces blog, which proved that whatever the problem is, it's only affecting GB. I can't even get onto GB via Messenger which, in the past, has been a conduit when the normal means of approach hasn't been so amenable. The whole process gets so far and then cuts to the usual default page. If I go back to the Spaces login page and try again, it happens again. Ditto if I simply try to view the page without logging in. Things were all right this afternoon. I posted a couple of entries from the office. I haven't been rude about Nanny in ages, but th...

Getting around that pernicious block. For anyone who's stuck behind the Great Firewall, Nanny and her antics regarding blogspot, wordpress, and Live Journal are a sodding great nuisance. Fortunately, if you're using Firefox, there's a fix available at Lost Laowai which allows you to view blogspot and wordpress blogs. And BTW, obviously, I'm back, but see the full story of my adventures (including the parts about which I forgot) over at Green Bamboo . Actually, one thing I failed to mention was the amount of Chinese that I saw in Auckland. There were a lot more signs in Chinese than I was expecting to see, although the one which amused me the most was for a Vietnamese restaurant called 漢山 hàn shān which means "Han (as in 'Han Chinese') Mountain". There was a Chinese takeaway near the motel where I was staying called The Great Tong (大唐 dà táng ), the second character referring to the Tang Dynasty.