Tarof (Persian: تعارف ) is a genuine Persian form of civility emphasizing both self-deference and social rank. The term encompasses a range of social behaviours, from a man displaying etiquette by opening the door for another person, to a group of colleagues standing on ceremony in front of a door that can permit the entry of only one at time, ( Read more... )

OK so I'm back in Perth. I was too busy to update while I was in China so here's some retrospective recaps of what happened. I'll divide it up because I know your attention spans aren't what they could be. Tonight is me getting to Chengdu, tomorrow I'll write about the event and later this week about the few days I spent in Hong Kong on the way ( Read more... )

Time to get the internet to work: 2 days.
Time to get around the Great Firewall of China: 12 seconds.

More later.

This weekend int and I went to the Blue Mountains. They are cold, but not really that big a deal compared to fucking Canberra cold. We went to Katoomba and I saw the Three Sisters which I thought were much more isolated but aren't. It's like the whole reason the town exists. Continued on to Jenolan to go caving which was fun. Similar deal to the caves ( Read more... )

1. Have not started essay. I have a flexible extension due to the whole getting pneumonia thing, but it needs to be done really soon as I have two more to get done for Sunday ( Read more... )

Oh so I forgot to mention that I'm in Melbourne with a few people from interstate/overseas this weekend. I'm typing this from the hotel lobby. It's been fun so far and I'll update more later. I'll be back on Monday.

Made it to Milan. Sitting around on the CS computers killing time before the bus comes to take us back to the lame hotel. Won't be having too much internet access because the lame hotel is too lame to have free wireless internet, it instead has outrageously expensive wireless internet, like everything else in this lame city ( Read more... )