Journal Entries
Three things
Posted Nov 1, 2004
Fit the first:
After something like eighteen months of lazing around, spending money and not working nearly as much as I should have; following a year and a half of physically shuttling back and forth between Nottingham and Swansea, of emotionally bouncing betwixt enthusiasm and ennui; and after one mad week of polishing, tweaking and last-minute panicking as at half past two on Friday afternoon I found at the thesis-binding shop is only open in the mornings...
Well, after all that and more, I've handed in my thesis and, but for one viva voce examination, the goodwill of the external examiner and the joys of graduation, I'll be an M.Res. 
Fit the Second:
Within the past month close friends of mine in the USA and in Ireland have each announced their intention to marry, which should be a couple of trips to look forward too in the not-so-distant future (a third such announcement from China turned out to be a dastardly hoax, much to the relief of my bachelor sensibilities and, no doubt, my bank manager). No matter that they're making me feel old well before my time, and no matter thet they'll probably never see this and that anyway I've congratulated them all already, here's a big congratulations to Adam and Lilia 
, and to Rebecca and Liam
Oh yeah, and a big fat 
to that fellow in China.
Fit the Third:
The beach at Swansea is amazing. I've been going there on and off for three years, and it's still unutterably amazing. That's all.
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Latest reply: Nov 1, 2004
Something not quite right here
Posted Sep 24, 2004
Having a bit of spare spending money (
), this morning I ambled in to town to see what I could spend it on. It wasn't too long before I found myself doing the rounds of the local music stores, and not much beyond that I found myself in possession of several shiny new CDs, including a two-disc set of Verdi's Requiem Mass 
.
Later, I felt the need for a some kleine nachtmusic to complement dinner (scrambled egg on toast, for the record). So... in goes the Verdi. Press play... silence. And more silence. Okay, I know it starts quietly, but after nearly a minute I'm a wee bit suspicious - this is supposed to be Verdi after all, not John Cage. I take the CD out, check I've not put it in upside down or something equally daft, but it looks fine. When it's back in the CD player, I notice there is only one track, 73m 48s long.
"Oh-ho," think I, "mayhap this is some arcane form of copy protection!" I don't think I've ever come across a classical music CD with copy protection, especially not on this label, but there's a first time for everything. So into the computer's CDROM drive it goes for forensic analysis. Here, the plot thickens because the computer can read the disk fine, no problem.
But then it would I suppose, because despite the distinctive label proclaiming the disc to be "Compact Disk digital audio", it is in fact a mode 1 CDROM data disc 
. Instead of Verdi's Requiem, parts I to V, I've got several installers for various software packages (mostly in Italian) and copy of the "Modulo di adesione e condizioni di contratto" ("LEGGERE CON ATTENZIONE LE MODALITÀ DI COMPILAZIONE RIPORTATE SUL RETRO DI QUESTO FOGLIO" don't you known, and "COMPILARE IL MODULO DI ADESIONE IN OGNI SUA PARTE" too. Anyone speak Italian 
).
The second CD is rather less exciting, being exactly what it proclaims to be, viz. parts VI and VII of the Requiem and four sacred pieces.
I think I may have to go back to the Classical Music Shop tomorrow and check it's not been taken over by an Italian phone company...
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Latest reply: Sep 24, 2004
A tale of fifty real ales
Posted Aug 28, 2004
The short version: 
The slightly longer version: It's the Mumbles Beer festival from Thursday to today, and for the first time in five years I'm in Swansea at the right time to visit. Fifty-seven real ales from thirty-four breweries, as well as six ciders and even a perry if you like that sort of thing (although by the end of yesterday evening there were considerably less than 57 beers, one cider and no perry left).
Due to the constraints of time, my friend and I only managed to sample ten of the brews on offer between us, but ye gods, they were good! Looks like I might have to hunt out a few more beer festivals in the future...
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Latest reply: Aug 28, 2004
A tale of two cities
Posted Jun 2, 2004
It's three weeks since I landed back in Blighty, and it occurred to me I've not actually written very much about my trip to China on h2g2. What would the point of travelling be if you told no-one about it? So here is a moderately comprehensive (and rather long) account of wot I did on me holidays.
My first sight of the country was from the plane window as dawn broke over a vast range of mountains 
. As first impressions go it was pretty spectacular, which was fortunate because the second thing I saw passing underneath the 747 was the arse-end of Beijing: a vast suburb of dwellings that looked suspiciously like pigsties. That was the last I saw of that side of things until I left Beijing though, thanks to the government's efforts at pretending to tourists that the slums don't exist.
After a couple of days acclimatisation, I was taken to the Great Wall, a trip that was memorable for three reasons. The first reason is that it was the first day of the bank holiday and we got stuck in a Chinese traffic jam. Apart from containing ten times as many cars, Chinese traffic jams differ from British ones in that cars in them are hardly ever stationary: when they can't move forward cars move from side to side, ducking in and out of the motorway lanes like they were in some sedately insane baroque dance. I imagine it would look quite pretty from above, but to be honest when you're stuck in one it could be Rotterdam or anywhere.
The second reason was lunch: it was the first time my dinner has been caught, beaten to death with a wire brush, gutted and cleaned before my very eyes. It's not pretty, nor is it a sight that's going to convert me to vegetarianism, but at least I knew the fish was fresh.
The third reason to remember that particular excursion is, of course, the Great Wall itself. As one President Nixon said, it sure is a great wall 
. Pictures give you an idea of what the thing looks like, but only by being there do you get the sense of the sheer enormous scale of it. You can stand on a beacon tower and follow the line of it, up and down and along the mountain tops all the way to the horizon, then you turn around and see it doing the same thing in the opposite direction. And it goes on like this for hundreds of miles, or at least it used to before it started falling down. And if any of you have got this far and are *still* after a comparison with Hadiran's Wall, no I say. Just, no.
The next few days were spent doing some of Beijing's tourist spots: The Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple and the like. Although, bank holidays in China being what they are we saw a lot more tourists than we did sights, and my friend and I were frequently threatened at camerapoint to pose for a photo, simply by virtue of being tall and foreign. Beijing's sights were impressive but thanks to the massive tourist presence curiously dead of any real character, so it's probably no surprise that the most memorable place from those three days was a quiet corner of a park tucked away behind the Forbidden City, where we just sat on a bench and watched the world go by.
Then it was time to leave Beijing, hop on a train and travel down the line to Shijiazhuang. Shijiazhuang, as my host in Beijing said, is a *real* Chinese city, i.e. it doesn't get zillion dollars worth of spit and polish from the Chinese government. Hardly any westerners go there and as a consequence there is no shortage of locals staring at you goggle-eye as you walk down the street.
There aren't any attractions of international renown around Shijiazhuang but we went and saw what there was, travelling on rickety minibuses that look like they should have been shaken apart every time they went over a pothole in the road (of which there were plenty). The attractions themselves were generally a bit shabby and unmaintained, and with only a fraction of Beijing's tourist throughput have managed to retain some modicum of historical atmosphere. Zhaozhou Bridge, an over-restored Tang Dynasty bridge had an atmosphere altogether more salient thanks to the malodorous "toilet" in the carpark 
It wasn't long though before we'd exhausted Shijiazhuang's supply of tourist attractions, so we spent a couple of days doing not a lot, sitting in various parks watching the world go by or trying to find something recognisable for lunch. Even that wears thin after a while, and after a week I was glad to travel back to Beijing for one night to do a bit of last minute souvenir shopping before catching the 10:05 Air France to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. In answer to your unspoken enquiries of concern, yes I did, on the flight out I spent 5 hours waiting in the very same terminal building that recently collapsed . There were no sign of any cracks, but the whole thing was riddled with square holes which should have set some engineering alarm bells ringing. From Paris I got a flight back to Birmingham and thence via train to Beeston.
Phew! 
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Latest reply: Jun 2, 2004
Home Again Or
Posted May 13, 2004
Whew! Back on home home turf and boy does it feel good. Foreign's a nice place to visit (any foreign, not just China) but I'm fairly certain I couldn't live there.
It's funny the things you miss, and the things you don't actually miss but nevertheless bring on that "goin' home" feeling when you do encounter them. For instance, In China it didn't take long before I was pining for breakfast cereal and decent music (Westlife and creepy Enrique Inglasias wear thin very quickly). But it wasn't until I got on the final plane and heard a proper Black Country accent that I realised what it meant to be coming back.
Now here I am with a bellyful of fish 'n' chips, a sackful of laundry and the Manic Street Preachers on the CD. I've been up since midnight British time but by the time I go to bed my shot-to-Hell body-clock will probably try to convince me to get up again. Right now I don't care, and I'm going to enjoy the feeling while it lasts.
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Latest reply: May 13, 2004
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