Rather good stuff available here until Thursday.

"Yeah, tapas? Just stick it in a pie like everyone else!"

"First, we hang you for a bit... but not for too long. We don't want to damage your neck. Then... we damage your neck."
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Fifa World Player 2009 shortlist:
Michael Ballack (Germany), Gianluigi Buffon (Italy), Iker Casillas (Spain), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Diego (Brazil), Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Michael Essien (Ghana), Samuel Eto'o (Cameroon), Steven Gerrard (England), Thierry Henry (France), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden), Andrés Iniesta (Spain), Kaká (Brazil), Frank Lampard (England), Luís Fabiano (Brazil), Lionel Messi (Argentina), Carles Puyol (Spain), Franck Ribéry (France), Wayne Rooney (England), John Terry (England), Fernando Torres (Spain), David Villa (Spain), Xavi (Spain).

Note the italics. It's like the Oscars. Although including EBJT is like including Steven Tyler's cameo in "Be Cool" for Best Actor, which the Oscars didn't as far as I recall.*

What I'm saying is this list could be a lot shorter.
Or longer, to be fair.
Maybe it's slightly meaningless as a list, I don't know.
There's a separate list for the ladies, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

* No, the Kissinger jokes do not apply. EBJT makes Kissinger look like Robeson, adjusted for spheres of influence.

(Explanation below the cut)

I have a crippling fear of modernity and the outdoors.
My psychiatrist says I have Portuguese agoraphobia.

( Read more... )

An interesting book review, of an interesting-sounding book, Red Sun: Travel in Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti.

“India’s Maoists do not want a separate country. They already have one. It’s just not the way they would like it – yet.”
...
"When Chakravarti asks Ajay Sahni, of the Indian Institute for Conflict Management, why Indian policymakers prefer to focus on Pakistan, jihadis and separatists rather than the massive and growing Naxalite issue, he responds: “Because we don’t like it. There is no foreign hand; we’ll have to face our own failures in this particular case.” Maoists do not consider themselves unpatriotic, and they are steeped in Indian history; as such, they represent a genuine crisis of nationalism."

As traditional dances go, this pretty well knocks the stuffing out of morris dancing.

My friend Stephen recently sent me, among other things, a copy of 9Tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. I am about to repay that act of generosity by nitpicking the opening chapters.

In fact, he and I have discussed before the problems with Grimwood's writing, and in reading this book I think I've worked out what my problem is with him. Because this is so far a much better book than the others of his I've read, Pashazade and Stamping Butterflies, it seems easier to spot these things. The following points may seem petty, and that's why 9Tail Fox is a better read - the issues are still there but have decreased in significance.

Grimwood's problem is interestingly paradoxical - he tries too hard and not enough.

Consider the description of the protagonist, Bobby Zha:
"A mixture of Cantonese, Catalan and Scottish, Sergeant Zha looked foreign, no matter where he was or who he was with..."

This kind of attempt to make your characters cool by giving them vaguely exotic backgrounds is very 1980s. I have been guilty of creating none-more-ethnic character backgrounds myself. The difference is that Grimwood is an adult writing a novel for publication, whereas I was a 14-year-old boy playing Shadowrun.

So he's overstretched very early on for no reason - Zha's Cantonese background comes up a bit, but Scottish? Who cares? It reminds me of Pullum on Dan Brown, "The details have no relevance to what is being narrated." Now, Pullum prefaced that sentence with "It has the ring of utter ineptitude", but Grimwood isn't that bad. Still, irrelevant details.

But when it comes to the actual work and craft of writing, Grimwood can't be bothered. It would take work to actually portray a Chinese-American living in San Francisco. So he doesn't. Chinese culture is given to us as... a parade with dragons and a teenage daughter who does tai chi.
Despite being Cantonese, the Sergeant has a Mandarin surname, although it's possible Grimwood decided to spell Cha with a Z for no reason. Stamping Butterflies demonstrated his lack of respect for Chinese language, which he seems to regard just as something to lend an aura of Inscrutable Ancient Mystery.

Lord alone knows what actual Chinese name Lietenant Que's surname is supposed to be. It's possible he actually knows the Hokkien pronunciation of the Mandarin Guo 郭. It's possible he took the Wade-Giles romanisation Kuei and wrongly assumed that the K (rather than K') was pronounced as in English, and decided to spell it like Manuel's catchprase in Fawlty Towers. But it seems more likely that he just made up a "Chinese-sounding" name. Grimwood's orientalism is a sort of Lustbader-lite.

Even the name of the titular nine-tailed fox is wrong - it should be jiuwei, not jinwei. U for N is a common typographical error, but since it's persisted into paperback Grimwood either doesn't care about the error, or he just doesn't know it's wrong.

This ruined Stamping Butterflies for me. I enjoyed the bits in Morrocco but could barely tolerate the cod-China far future segments, and they in turn undermined the Morrocco parts - was I only enjoying the atmosphere because I know nothing whatsoever about North Africa?

It's not all ethnocentrism, though. There are bits of plain bad writing that needed a more ruthless editor. For example:

"Okay," said Lieutenant Que. "We're done here."
They both heard the dismissal in his voice.

In my experience, you only need to infer dismissal from someone's voice when they haven't just directly stated dismissal in their words.

Grimwood also likes his lazy cliches:
Things in the SFPD were changing. There were exams and job appraisal forms, review boards and seminars on how to relate to the city's different minorities.
If this book had its finger any more on the pulse of the latest issues in policing, it would be an episode of The Bill circa 1986.

OK, one more bit of ethnocentrism:
A sign on the front read, Ticket Office - Han Poon Shipping. It was so faded that, if it was not for the Chinese characters below, Bobby wouldn't have been able to decipher what it said at all.

To JCG, "a sign" is only something written in English.

But it's not all bad. The plot and setting (so far) are good and, importantly, not trying to be too clever. And the writing has plenty that an editor would keep, such as this description of a warehouse: "a jutting square of yellow brick that stole the middle from what had once been a large courtyard." Economical, evocative... nice work.

I hope for his next book, Grimwood gets edited more and maybe meets a Chinese person. He's got potential.

And Stephen, nitpicks aside, I am really enjoying the book, honest.

Just like everyone else, I am sad to hear that Chas and Dave are no more. Dave is retiring.

Along with the "Mentalist" thing (see earlier post)*, another of my idle-moment word games is to make up new versions of the chorus for the Chas & Dave hit "Hot-shot Tottenham". To make it more challenging I require a slightly tighter rhyme scheme with the word 'Spurs' than the original song.



Here's one of mine.
We're hotshot Tottenham, we are the super Spurs
Although we like our fancy drinks we rarely have chartreuse.
When do our gardening we use our secateurs
'Cause we're hot-shot Tottenham.

I hear Chas will be touring solo. Chas, if you're reading this, you can have that for free.



* Here's another one I thought of recently: "It would take a mentalist to reach that conclusion from the available evidence."

Today I happened across, as one does, a Facebook group called (and I apologise for the language) "SAVE THE INDONESIAN CULTURE FROM F*CKING SH*T MALAYSIA".

Here's the English bit of the blurb:
MALAYSIA IS ALWAYS STEAL OUR CULTURE. THEY ARE HAVEN'T ANY CULTURE IN THEIR COUNTRY. NOW, PENDET DANCE THE TRADITIONAL OF BALINESE DANCE IS STEALED BY THEIR FOR MALAYSIA TRULY ASIA PROMOTION. IM VERY SAD BECAUSE PENDET DANCE, REOG PONOROGO, BATIK, AND HUNDRED OF INDONESIAN CULTURE IS STEALED BY MALINGSIA (MALING = THIEF, MALAYSIA=MALINGSIA). ... WE MUST SHOW TO THE WORLD THAT MALAYSIA IS DOESN'T HAVE ANYONE CULTURE OR FOOD, THEY ARE ALWAYS STEAL INDONESIAN CULTURE FOR THEIR TOURISM.

Now, there are some legit grievances here. The appropriation of batik as a "Malaysian craft" is a bit suspect, for example -- it's a craft that goes on in Malaysia, but the implication that it originates from Malaysia is a non-starter.

But an unfortunate offshoot of Pancasila is that you get people deciding that some cultural artefact or other is "Indonesian" and that therefore no one else can have it. This is not really on, since Indonesia is a relatively new idea in itself. It's only been around since 1945. Batik isn't Indonesian, it's Javanese and Balinese. But it's also Chinese and Indian and Egyptian. A friend of mine recently claimed that China spread batik to all these other countries. Since batik in Indonesia predates written records and in Egypt it predates Chinese contact with Africa, that seems a bit unlikely. More likely is that batik is a pretty obvious thing to do with textiles, just as spaghetti/noodles are a pretty obvious food, and it can be invented separately in different places. If nuclear fission can be discovered independently in two different places, making patterns with melted wax isn't exactly a showstopper.

There's faux authenticity in the mix, too -- the kecak dance, perhaps the acme of the Authentic Indo-Experience, was synthesised in the 1930s by a Dutch anthropologist called Walter Spies (to the best of my knowledge he was not involved in espionage, which with that name is a shame). It's a bit like Scottish tartans, you know.

Anyway, it's an unpleasant facet of the nationalism that, to be fair, does have some positive aspects in Indonesia. But when it comes to getting irate because some people who, frankly, live closer to the source of the culinary delight that is rendang than you do, have the nerve to cook their own version, you need to get a grip.

And keep it under your hat, but I actually kind of prefer Malaysian rendang anyway.

So TVB is now showing The Mentalist every week. The title still makes me giggle slightly. Not every time, but still.

My latest fun game is to create lines that could be used in the show, wherein 'mentalist' means d. A magician who performs feats which apparently demonstrate extraordinary mental powers, such as telepathy, precognition, etc.; a mind-reader.

But that could also be applied to 'mentalist' as in its common British usage, 3. Brit. slang. A crazy, uncontrolled, or eccentric person; a ‘nutcase’..

e.g.

"Be careful around this guy. I hear he's a mentalist."

"Briggs! Get this mentalist out of my office!"
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Here's a bit of Hong Kong linguistics for you.

This is the number 1 typhoon warning signal, "indicating that a tropical cyclone is centred within about 800 km of Hong Kong and may affect the territory". And people refer to it as 'the T-one signal'. This is also used to describe the weather itself, e.g. "I think it's a T1 today."

Except... that's not a T. This is the next signal up, when "strong wind is expected or blowing generally in Hong Kong near sea level, with a sustained speed of 41-62 km/h (kilometres per hour), and gusts which may exceed 110 km/h, and the wind condition is expected to persist."



They're a series of abstract shapes that used to be raised at visible points around the territory to indicate the storm warning - the system used to incorporate direction at this level too, but it was simplified as today's mostly land-based audience don't need to know this and people used to erroneously think that a number 5 was less severe than a 7, rather than just blowing in a different direction.
The physical signs are no longer used, but the relevant verb is still 'to hoist' - announcements (and most malls, office buildings, etc. have a series of signs they put up in their public areas for this purpose) read "Tropical Storm Warning number 3 has been hoistead" or similar.

Here are the rest:



However, these are still referred to as T followed by a number, as you can see from my friend's recent Facebook status.


(Signal 8 is the point at which you don't have to go to work. Disappointingly, while we have had a couple of tropical storms of the requisite strength this year, they keep turning up at night or the weekend.)

When I first moved to Hong Kong I assumed the T stood for typhoon, and anecdotally this seems to be a common conception of the terminology, although I haven't done a proper survey.
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Some photos taken for Lamma-zine of our adult and kids' classes on Saturday.



Gallery here.

;;

Some time back, I took part in a Spurs transfer prediction game. Out of sheer boredom, obviously. The rules went: "Everyone picks 5 players going out (2 points for each correct one) and 5 players coming in (5 points for each correct answer." The balance in these things between predictions based on what you think will probably happen, and plain wishful thinking, is always very shaky.
So far I am doing pretty well on the outs but the ins were always wild stabs in the dark. This is where I stabbed at on 27 May 2009:

OUT:
Bentley
Rocha
Gunter
Gilberto
Dos Santos

IN:
Marouane Chamakh
Kenwyne Jones
Glen Johnson
Danko Lazovic
Jonjo Shelvey

I think six points is my lot, but luckily no one else had a clue either, so there you go.
I suppose Jones or Chamakh might still happen, but I'd be very very surprised.
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This is why no one likes Hongkongers.


據知戚眉廣告月初播出後，最少有 20個市民向影視處舉報，不滿廣告教壞細路，擔心小朋友會有樣學樣擠眉弄眼，有失斯文；有個港大碩士生批評廣告令人睇到好唔舒服，指摘廣告公司唔應該搵小朋友做表演工具。

When the Cadbury Eyebrows advertisement began showing in Hong Kong this month, at least twenty citizens filed complaints with the Hong Kong Television and Entertainment Authority, concerned that the ad might encourage children to move their eyebrows around in violation of common decency. One Hong Kong University masters student complained that the ad would make people uneasy and that the advertising agency should not have hired children as performers.
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From elsewhere:

"because i like him, i'm glad he landed in such a great spot. he's still in a big league, he gets champions league on top of that (in a world cup year), he plays with two ivorians, the weather is better, and some might even argue spanish women are every bit as lovely as english. god smiles on that crazy clown."

Yeah, pretty much.
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Popbitch is starting a bit of a 90s retrospective series, and has put up a selection of three (3) videos from 1990.

I have a very vivid memory of "Turtle Power" by Partners in Kryme. Not from 1990, though being the right age at precisely the right time for the Turtles craze, how could I forget the lyrics, which we dutifully memorised, printed in the TMHT fan club newsletter that my friend Tony had? Yes, that's right, TMHT.

No, this was years later - 2005, in fact - when I was driving with my mum and my brother from east to west in the north of England to go to my cousin's wedding. As we pulled up to a crossroads, the end of the retro-chart show hosted by Dale Winton (for it was he) came up, and at number one 15 years previously, it had been Partners in Kryme.

So there we sat, waiting for the light to go green in a picturesque village in the Peak District, with postcard-quaint cottages around us and blue skies above, and the green hills rolling away, as pensioners slowly crossed the road chattering to one another, presumably on their way to Victorian tea houses and knitting shops. All accompanied by bombastic 90s novelty rap.

"T.U.R.T.L.E. POWER! T.U.R.T.L.E. POWER!"



Nice.
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Purple fingers. Yawn. We need a new code-image for "look at the little darlings with their elections in developing countries; they'll be walking next".

News media in China and HK were announcing SBY's win yesterday evening, which struck me as suspiciously early. I'm not trying to do Indonesia down, but if it takes the US longer than a day to count the results, how's The World's Largest Archipelago going to manage it so fast?
But it turns out those were just exit polls, so never mind.
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Indonesia goes to the polls today.

Opinion polls have given incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a comfortable lead over his rivals.
He faces challenges from former president Megawati Sukarnoputri and outgoing Vice-President Jusuf Kalla.

Kalla, currently the vice president, is the 'problem' candidate. He's the candidate for the continuity party of Suharto's New Order, pretty heavily Islamist, and was the kingmaker for Susilo's presidency. A lot of SBY's support from non-Muslim voters during the shaky years of his rule so far has been partly attributable to the knowledge that if he were removed, Kalla would become the man in charge.

He's unlikely to make significant inroads, but if he did his power in parliament would be significant, and the chances of a Susilo-Megawati alliance coming about are slim, let alone the chances of this being effective as a counterbalance.
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This was pretty much made for timdenee but I'm sure other people will find it interesting too.

The Independent has up one of its usual fluff photo-stories, where they cobble together a collection of images related to a recent news story - in this case Newcastle United's new away kit of dubious taste - for bored office workers to flick through without having to think much (hence why I was reading it).

Their "terrible football strips" collection contains the usual howlers (e.g. Hull City's velvetesque tiger-stripes), and for some reason the kit of Palermo (see above). The caption runs "Italian side Palermo play in pink".

This strikes me as excessive anti-pinkism. There's nothing wrong with Palermo's shirts, particularly. And the odd thing is that up until roughly the 1940s, pink was considered a sporty, aggressive colour suitable only for boys and not girls -- on account of it being a version of red, which as we all know is associated with strength, vigour, masculinity and England winning at football, except for all those other times England has worn red.

Little girls, in those days, wore blue.
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So apparently Branson's family were friends of popular sweary amputee Biggles-figure Douglas Bader.


Mr Branson told the BBC that as a "nasty little boy" he would run off with Sir Douglas's legs, requiring the airman to come "on his hands, screaming after me".

This is one of those small historical connections that are just, well, weird.
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