(no subject)
SCAVENGING FREE RADICAL TECH
So there's a Canadian, an Australian, and an Irishman sitting in a bar, and as the pittance-paid brews continue to stack up, who has the flowing cup not rendered locquacious? The talk turns from the quotidian as they begin to tell pub jokes, beginning with the premise "So there's a Canadian, an Australian, and an Irishman sitting in a bar, and after a few brews their tongues begin to loosen and the topics turn from the minutae of their days to bawdy jokes, the first one going: "So there's a Canadian, an Australian and an Irishman sitting in a bar, and a few drinks in the pretenses of polite and metered discussion are dropped and they decide they would sooner be regaling one another with a little ethnic humour, so someone begins: "So there's a Canadian, an Australian and an Irishman sitting in a bar, and a couple mugs in they have firmly turned their backs on the discussion of earthly affairs and would sooner find humour in the hypothetical - thusly one begins: "So there's a Canadian, an Australian and an Irishman sitting in a bar, and upon their quaffing a few pints it becomes clear that the vibe of the evening is heavily slanted towards that timeworn tradition of recounting the old crowd-pleasers, so the first to carry the torch across that inevitably-transcended gulf between pleasantry into ribaldry, that boundary which is guarded but by flimsy ceremony and avoidable exhaustion, begins: "So there's a Canadian......... " " " " " " ".
Yes, it turns out that just standing around bearing the mark of Cain is enough to fall into the tiny and familial 'expat' community - composed, as far as I can tell, of that dozen or so folk who work for the same company as I and haven't yet been suckered into the exclusivity of marital bliss - who are a kind and reasonable bunch of people, getting along for the sake of getting along, a pure form of socialization uncoloured by some distinctive sense of group unity or tribalism; viz, where other groups I have hung with have fallen along lines described clear Venn diagrams, circles labelled with familiar old tropes riffing on motifs social and aesthetic, my 'social time' in the last day or so has been spent on a polka-dot plain, superceded by the thin new-moon sliver of 'in manchuria' and 'anglo'... though both of those terms, and particularly the latter, can be semantic swiss cheese if you look at it the right way - but that kind of ponderous metaling-what-stics, it turns out, is my unique and irrelevant domain amongst the liaoning laowai. The semantician (I am to begin wrestling in the WWF under that name) identifies a niche through creating it, while simultaneously creating a niche through identifying it - and fills it, because all you have to do is 'believe' you do. Click your spittle-soaked rubber heels together and say "there's no place like LOC[beIN[PLACE(home)]]".
CLAN OF THE CAVE BORE
A few days ago I dug an excavated neolithic village, the millenia-old tombs of an old mongol steppe tribe who made its matriarchal way to manchuria, buried its empress, scattered a bunch of pottery around and was swallowed by whatever purges happened to be going on in 2000 BC. A fantastic place to be on a frost-tipped winter's day, thatched huts recreated over fenced-off archaeological dig sites; a guide following from one ex-house to another and attempting to explain its function. lourdzwaa, in hanyu: "So... when someone dies.... they put them in here? under the earth?" "Yes...." - a single finger extended and dragged across his neck for illustration. lourdzwaa: "so... before someone is put in there... no head?". Guide: "No.... they have heads".
Yes, turn a few radians in any direction and you will see the highrises and factory chimneys. Ten thousand photographs taken illustrating the "new" China, something modern framed through the ruins of something ancient... ooh, ooh, get a shot of that apartment block cresting behind the manchu gates, bonus points if a few rays of sun emanate from their points of intersection... "land of contrast" being a code word employed as far as I can tell only by outsiders for emotions ranging from the morose sigh of "one more civilization swallowed up" to the white-knuckle eschatological "wait, so they'll all want cars now too?".