“Well, it’s only a proportionally small section of the internet, dear.”
It’s worth noting that this blog is now doing slightly better on the eyeballs front that my ‘flagship’ one at Which is more Distant. Now, there are many reasons why this many be so: perhaps it reflects a preference of the average Joe Internet-reader for photos over mountainous text and questionable image choices. Perhaps writing about myself here at least saves me from the accusation that I’m just repeating what’s been better said elsewhere. Or perhaps a clue can be found in the Top Search returns for the blog as it stands since I added the last post:
japan ninjasex, japanese ninja sex, tachimasu, nanka japanese, itte imasu
I have got to start going off-topic more on Which is more distant.
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Hong Kong and India Dec 08 – Jan 09
Flying to India to visit my girlfriend I had an eight-hour stopover in Hong Kong (and a bloody hour-long codeshare stopover in Taipei which my air tickets studiously failed to mention). I got to go into the city by bus, in glorious weather, recreating exactly our minibus drive into the city the day I arrived four and a half years ago. I can’t express how much I love the city, how happy it made me to see it’s weird, part-lunar, part-tropical landscape, its forested uncivil hills towering over the towers, hear people answer the phone with the local “Waii?”, hear them speaking six differnet languages and all swearing in English.
I was unspeakably lucky that I got to go there after leaving home: I still don’t feel as much at home anywhere, not even beloved Oxford. I walked down to TST from Jordan- didn’t have the time for Mong Kok, my old neighbourhood and formerly the most denself populated place on earth- took an old favourite, the Star Ferry, saw the devastation of the new waterfront developments in Central, walked up to Lan Kwai Fong past the Foreign Correspondants’ Club (which I once tried to gatecrash and of which I will one day be a member), made it to the Whiskey Priest for Happy Hour, read the papers, dined on Shashlik at Balalaika, walked back down to IFC 1 (from the Skyhook Scene in The Dark Knight) and onto the Airport express. Lonesome bliss.
The Star Ferry
People who know the city will understand my shock at the destruction of the plaza in front of the Central Ferry terminal, right down into the old underpasses.
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How I love India. Where else in the world would there be in a market for pirated books on street stalls? Jewtown, Cochin, Kerala.
you heard
Part of the oldest Synagogue in India, which nowadays serves about 60 Jewish folks. They had their first wedding in like 20 years a week after we were there.
Also please note that while we were there the style of news coverage still overclocked after the Mumbai attacks ranged from the reasoned and pragmatic to completely batshit ball-eating crazy about impending war with Pakistan. That latter mode was the one favoured by Star News, the News Corp. arm in India.
Cochin
A stunning Indian girl in a kimono, beautifully tied by me. That’s what I call fusion.
There are more and better taken ones of these, but they’re just for me. We were to discover in Goa that generally speaking White girls can get away with much more independence and general skimpiness than can the “locals”.
This is in Thekkady, though.
Chinese fishing nets, waterfront, Cochin
Kathakali performers, Kumarakoram, Kerala
A notorious abandoned Moscow-registered Tanker that’s been long-gutted and left off Calangute Beach in Goa for years now because no-one wants to take responsibility for it. Stay tuned for a re-imagining of the ship as the heart of a paramilitary anti-globalisation movement. They stare out day and night over the excess and sloth of basting holidaymakers and plot the downfall of the enableocracy.
