CHINA WEEK DAY 5! THE WIRE

I was once in the market flicking through the pirate dvds, I had gone through the pile and there was nothing that caught my fancy. Pirated DVDs generally consisted of 4 or 5 series of American shows, ripped of the t.v and compressed on to a few discs. With Chinese subtitles. There was always a great selection.

On this particular day, I had gone through the stack of dvds and the stall owner stopped and pick one up and said "Very good, Very good" It was of course, The Wire.

I think this is proof, if ever it was needed, that The Wire IS the greatest television programme ever. Sure, its fine for western media to hype it to the point where people think they are cool for not having seen The Wire (you are wrong by the way, you aren't too cool for school, you are a philistine) but for poor market stall owners in Inner Mongolia to start hyping it is another thing all together.

There also is a possibility that he picked one up at random and, desperate to make a sale, turned to the hard sell......

CHINA WEEK DAY 4!

ACCOMMODATION



A Yurt



Inside a Yurt



Chairman Mao's dead body lives here.



The Summer Palace in Beijing. The Emperor used to escape here when it got too hot in the city during the summer. Poor dear.



The view from my apartment in Inner Mongolia. This is a university campus. Note the drab commie style architecture.

CHINA WEEK DAY 3!

Once I had a lesson with an older class, 15 and 16 years olds, and my brief was just to discuss movies. I wondered what could we discuss? Would they be familiar with the same movies I was familiar with? I decided to check with a chinese lady to see what movies she knew. She mentioned two movies straight away, her favorite american movies. They were, epic love story of a handsome tramp and a buxom English rose trapped in stuffy english society on board the doomed ocean liner the Titanic, Titanic (1997, James Cameron)



and this.


I have no idea what this is*

Anyway, I figured this class was going to be a long 40 minutes. To kick it off I started to list the highest grossing movies of all time. I thought that they will have heard of most of these and the banter would begin.

AVATAR. Silence. No one had heard of it. (lucky them, am I right????? Thats 4 hours I wont get back, it's just dances with smurfs!!!!**)

TITANIC

Yep. Small banter. Girls loved it. So romantic.

THE DARK KNIGHT

Never heard of it!

STAR WARS

Never heard of it! (Wish I never heard of the prequels, am I right***)

JURASSIC PARK

Never heard of it.

JAWS.

Never heard of it.


So movies that are popular here aren't necessarily popular in China. ISN'T THAT AMAZING

Except, Pirates of the Caribbean. Fuck sake. Transformers. Fucking hell. And Harry Potter. The cunt.

*I have decided to download and review this. Expect it sometime next week. Or never.

**Satire.

***More Satire

China Week Part 2!

Look at this lad. He lived inside the gardens of the Forbidden City in Beijing.



Look at this lad. Half turtle half dragon?

THE END

Happy New Year

The year of the Dragon. Lets hope these guys don't get on the case!

As it's Chinese New Year and beginning of Spring festival, this will be China week on wallofblog. I lived there for a while last year. And I'm going going back soon. Each day I will publish an interesting (it's relative) anecdote or picture relating to my time there. I hate to keep going on about it, but I'm quicky running out of material (now that I do a post a day) and lets face it, it's all I've got really.

PART ONE:

MUSIC

The city I work in, Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, is pretty remote. It feels remote, the only foreigners in the city are other english techers. Its not a tourist destination, people pass through it, rather than visit it....and yet very morning before the local shopping centre would open, Irish grown fairy women songstress Enya's 1995 No.7 hit, "Anywhere is" would be blasted out over the centres' P.A system.


Enya unites all cultures.

Westlife and Boyzone are also popular and the Saturdays and Avril lavigne are often heard on the radio in taxis. Additionally, there was a cafe/restaurant that I used to pass on the way to and from work in the evening that played Mariah Carey's 1994 No.6 hit (and holiday standard) All I want for Christmas is you, on a constant loop, out into the street. In July. That is true.

This is an interesting feature isn't it?

Amazing who you run into!!!!

Fuck SOPA and PIPA

From Wikipedia

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light. Although black is sometimes described as an "achromatic", or hueless, color, in practice it can be considered a color, as in expressions like "black cat" or "black paint"


I don't really know what they are, SOPA and PIPA, but I think I have defeated them with this post. Me and all my internet brothers went black. And SOPA and PIPA went away.

Racist.

Remembering Stuff! Part 2

He was bad, wasn't he?






.......Really running out of material.......

Thanks Apple. Taple

Isn't it amazing how Apple have managed to make their operating software even more unreliable than Windows with iOS 5. If I wanted something that crashes, freezes, is unresponsive and generally doesn't do what I want it to do I'd turn on my laptop.


Zing. That'll show 'em

Topical stuff

Wikipedia, the second greatest site on the internet, has been shut down today in protest about something or other. I think it's something to do with celebrity big brother, occupy wall street (WE ARE THE 99%) and the inevitable collapse of western civilisation. Anyway I've discovered that while the main site isn't working, Wikipedia applications on i devices are still working, as the picture below shows.


From wikipanion for iPad, taken 9.37 am

Takin' Care o' Business

Although wallofblog is fast approaching a phenomenal 3000 page views in under two years (and not only from the 3 people I know who read this, over half of those hits are from outside Ireland, mainly the U.K and U.S.A) I'm using this post to try get new readers in. Most of my page views come from people googling the right (or wrong) combination of words and ending up here. (I will do a more detailed post on this in the future, give you readers a peak behind the curtain, it's very very interesting)

To hook new readers I'll need to list terms that I know the kids will be googling

So:

Gervais globes

Bafta oscars

Beiber

The artist

Lady GaGa

The inbetweeners

Blue Ivy

Harry Potter

iPod

Skins

xBox

Lolz

Facebook

Major battles from World War 2

Tits boobs anal girl on girl blow job ass

(the last two are just me)

Jigsaw News Now

It was too hard.

Hot Dog!

I was doing a bit of tidying today and I found an old scratch card that I won on the lotto a while back behind the bin. It had three stars on it but I made the decision at the time to throw it out rather than sending it in and risk going on Winning Streak. What price can do you put on your dignity? (not that I have much, but I'd hate to lose what's left in front of such a large audience) It's an awful programme. Reflecting on it now, I think if I did send in the card and got on the thing, I'd just give all the prize money to charity. At least that way the humiliation would be of some benefit to somebody.

Although maybe it's not Winning Streak.

I don't like raffles. Not raffles where you buy the tickets in advance and don't have to show up to the draw, more the spontaneous raffles, where half way through something, people start selling tickets from a book of cloakroom tickets and there is a draw later on. When I was younger, I used to "pray" that my tickets wouldn't be pulled out so I wouldn't have to get up in front of everyone for the sake of a ham.

Yeah, I don't think Winning Streak is the problem.

The Video Man

Netflix, or Netflicks as I like to call it, launched in Ireland this week and its pretty cool. Stream TV or films to your device of choice for only 6.99 a month. The first month is free! They do make you sign in with a facebook account, but, there a normal way to sign in also, it is just difficult to find. I like it. I have watched 25 epiosdes of hit Showtime comedy drama Weeds this week. Going to start Twin Peaks series 2 next week!

The film selection isn't great though. It reminds me of the man who, 15 years ago, used to call around to the house every Tuesday evening with his boot full of videos. You could pick 3 and keep them for the week, all for the low low price of 5 pounds. There was a lot there, but nothing you really want to see, nothing just released, nothing that would impress your friends in school. You still always felt though that you had to take 3 videos, because the video man was there. I feel the same about netflicks.I feel I should watch some films because I can, because they are there, not because I want to.

It is good for telly though.

But this annoys me!





Fucking Wacky Programmes!!! Arrested Development, "WACKY" bollox is it "WACKY"

All in all netflicks gets the thumbs up from wallofblog

In Praise of...

Welcome to the first part in a new series here on wallofblog, where I take something I feel is underrated and sing its praises.

First.



It is nice.

Competition time now

I have a mysterious, wealthy neighbour, no one ever sees him or knows where he got his money from. I have a nickname for him (that I thought of today). It's "Macintosh"

What Movie am I referencing?

First person to post the answer below wins a prize!*

*they don't

Experiment One

I've been trying to grow a beard for a couple of years now and I'm never successful. Months of growth amounts to what looks like a devastated field of crops ravished by wild life and fire. Now substitute the field for my face, and the charred and dying remains of growth for pubes. That is my beard

There is an old wives tale that suggests regular shaving will result in thicker hair growth and a big bushy beard.

I'm going to test this theory.

I have been shaving everyday since December 26th and will continue to do so until the end of January, when I will let my facial hair grow for a week.

Results to follow....

New Years Resolutions!!!

Yes! Its that time of year again! The tenth of January, new years resolution time.

Here are mine.

1)Do this blog EVERYDAY.

Yep, you read that right. At least one post a day. They may not be published on the day, depending on circumstances, but expect at least 366 posts in 2012.

2) Win the premiership as Newcastle Utd in FIFA 11 on the Xbox 360.

I'm currently 2nd, a point behind Chelsea and three clear of Man Utd. I have beaten Utd away and gotten a draw with Chelsea at the bridge but it's still only earlier December. I need a good centre back when the transfer window opens in January and hopefully I can keep up the good form. I feel some shitty draws against Blackburn and the like on the way though. Need to take a couple of days off I think. I get nervous picking up the controls.

3)Read 100 books. I've added a widget below where you all can track my failure

Two down!

Jigsaw News Now

I have been completely inundated (I haven't) with requests for a jigsaw update so here we go....







Look, if I'm going to keep up this post a day average, they aren't all going to be gold like the dog face man.

BBs Back in Business

Was trying to the save the economy the other day with a creation that would lift this country out of recession and put Ireland back on the world stage.....

What could it be.......

Guinness Ice-Cream of course!

Using a base of custard, cream and egg white for the ice cream, the reduced Guinness was added to the mixture and frozen.



At least it looked ok

The results weren’t a disaster, just underwhelming. The majority of the Guinness quickly sank to the bottom of tub resulting in a pretty tasteless ice-cream. To combat this, I’d need either something complicated with liquid nitrogen that I don’t really understand or a custom made freezer that had a constantly rotating compartment that kept the mixture moving whilst it froze. If anyone from the department of enterprise is reading this and would like to give me money to purse this further just send me an e-mail.

Until then, this awful awful recession continues.......