Occasional Tales

But something to do with Sichuanhua. When I got to Chengdu, I was keen to hear the local speech which will be the fourth variety I've been exposed to. In Beijing, they sounded like pirates. In southern Jiangsu Province, they sounded Japanese or Korean. In Fuzhou, they seem to have decided that affricates are passé, and that the /r/~/l/ allophony seemed even more extreme than it was in Jiangsu Province. A day or two after I got here, I went to a local restaurant where there were three guys speaking some language that I couldn't identify. My best guess is that it was the local version of Mandarin. The one feature I noticed was the odd-sounding tone which reminded me of what the Uighurs appeared to be doing clause-finally, although as far as I'm aware, Uighur isn't a tone language. Anyway, I was nosing around the Web, looking for info about Sichuanhua, when I found long legged fly , who's been posting a primer about the language. There. A post that isn't about the

Go about your business, citizens. Well, having established what constitutes short shorts, I realised that I hadn't covered the conditions in the arena of play. Actually, it's quite simple. You can play the game anywhere at any time, but you aren't allowed to go looking. In other words, the sightings must be random. You can't, for example, sit in a popular public place for the sole purpose of playing the game. But if you're in a restaurant and you happen to be sitting at the window, then you can play the game. Don't think there will be much chance of playing the game today. It's been raining on and off.

Quarter length? That's practically a pair of trousers. My score in the short shorts game when I went over to Carrefour this morning was a pitiful 30. I scored 150 when I went to Zoe's this evening, but as I sat there looking out the window and kind of regretting my decision to go there because I wasn't feeling that hungry and I haven't been feeling that well, I thought that the short shorts game really needs some definite rules. The basic criterion is that the shorts must have the merest hint of length. They don't have to be denim, but most of the short shorts which satisfy the first condition are. So, there's Version 1.0 of the rules. Feel free to play along if you're somewhere in China.

I got lost. I went for a walk after tea last night and lost my bearings. However, my final score in the short shorts game was 195 points. I don't think it's really the weather for short shorts, but I don't think the girls here understand that. Nor do many of them understand that short shorts and high heels aren't really the most sensible combination. Boxes arrived today, and everything was sorted out quickly and efficiently. Some loose ends to be tied up, but the bulk of my stuff has somewhere to go.

In at least two senses. But first, short shorts news. My outing to Carrefour yesterday resulted in a score of 150 points in spite of the day being a little cooler. Not sure there will be much short shorts action today because it's raining. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, on with the main feature. It's been noted in various places (aka expat blogs) that China does appear to attract some rather peculiar foreigners. The programme I'm with has had alcoholics, drug addicts, gay child molesters, and a couple guys who apparently set themselves up as pimps. There are also the missionary tendency people who seem to be older colonial women who, at least subconsciously, appear to believe they're bringing enlightenment to the heathens. I'm told that Chengdu is full of foreign weirdos. Tësaien celmenne tei' édhi. Cadhan si·mei mé 'tei. All these sorts of people seem to think that the laws of physics don't apply in China. Somehow, what would be normal dece

Short shorts and puffy skirts. When I was doing my PhD, it was the age of 70s retro. The undergraduates of the day, who had been born at the tail-end of the 70s and thus had no recollection of flares or any other sartorial disasters, would dress up like hippies. Their ignorance was their protection from good taste. I used to play a game in which I'd score 15 points every time I saw one of these retro idiots. Tonight I thought I could do the same with short shorts or those awful puffy skirts from the 80s. Every time I see some girl in short shorts, I score 15 points. I think I would've scored about 90 points this evening if I'd started playing the game early enough. However, if see too many girls in short shorts, I think my eyeballs might melt sooner from the strain.