Roundup Part 2
Now that the Chinese political machine has rolled to a halt and the new administration is in power perhaps the firewall restrictions might be relaxed a little. Internet has been hell here for weeks. It has been taking up to thirty minutes of repeated attempts just to log in to gmail and then it only loads with partial functionality. Perfectly innocuous sites that just happen to be hosted somewhere other than China have been unavailable and the whole internet experience has been a nightmare.
Hopefully it will be back to it's normal pain-in-the-arse status rather than it's completely unusable status soon.
Not Chinese news but I was amused to receive an email from England about the recent British election of Police Commissioners. Lowest ever turnout, eh? One polling station having a turnout of zero, eh? LibDems beaten in Coventry by spoiled ballot papers, eh?
Ah, democracy in action.
No such problems here in China where the transition of national power to a new assembly is now complete without any of that messy business of voting. I was also amused by this, though...
http://www.englishblog.com/2012/11/cartoon-the-chinese-reformer.html
I may have mentioned before that I think China is the noisiest country in the world. The current manifestation of this is at the Postal Bank of China across the street from my apartment which has some kind of event or promotion going at the moment – as the signs are in Chinese I can't be more specific than that. What I can tell you is that in addition to the large inflatable arch in front of the building it has two very loud speakers which have for two days been playing loud, pompous, militaristic music at a volume that can be heard in the park more than two miles away. Perhaps it wouldn't matter quite so much if it weren't the same piece of loud, pompous, militaristic music over and over again accompanied from time to time by a deep, stentorian voice proclaiming something or other in Chinese.
The pile of uncollected rubbish outside the apartment block continues to grow, though many of the holes and trenches that were, theoretically, the reason it could not be collected have now been filled in again. It's currently (and I've paced it out) twenty-two feet long, eighteen feet wide and four feet deep at the centre. A smaller separate heap blocks the other route out of the block so, either way, there is a bit of wading to be done. If it gets much bigger and deeper it will actually start blocking the windows to the ground floor apartments.
Finally I ought to say that during a few days off when the school had exams I managed to complete the draft copy of my new poetry book. It's currently with a few friends for proof-reading and review and will, in the next month or so, be available to buy. Here is a sneak preview of the cover picture. The book will be called "The Unchanging Wolrd of Mr and Mrs Sun" and will contain a mixture of poetry about China and selections from my previously unbpublished British work.
My next post will be a taster in the form of one poem from each section.
Bye for now.
