Bollocks

What you'd see if you leaned out of my bedroom window and cast your eyes right a bit. And also adjusted your retinas to make the colours zingier.

Pardon my French but it's proving quite difficult to blog. I can't blog at work because I'm doing so-called "work" and I can't blog at home because of the Chinese Communist Party. Know what I call 'em? That's right. Chinese Communist Party Poopers.
And I have loads of hilarious anecdotes already. Especially the one where I attempt, and fail, to buy a postage stamp whilst simultaneously becoming the catalyst for a loud shouting match that quickly involves every Chinese person in the Post Office ie everyone except me.
Also there was to be an instructional guide explaining how to be a Chinese pedestrian (Rule 1: Always find the narrowest point on the pavement to stop and dither. That way you can block an entire thoroughfare all by yourself).
Also it's Chinese New Year on Wednesday whereupon, so I've been told, the entire country goes collectively batshit.  In my opinion they all seem bloody batshit under normal circumstances so that's got to be worth taking a few pictures of.
Bloody communists. Always spoiling things.

Some intial pictures

What you'd see if you were looking out of my bedroom window. Though what you're doing in there, I have no idea. Poking around in my underpant drawer I'll warrant.

What you'd see if you were the TV.

Ni hao from chilly Shanghai

You know. In China.
Ni hao, for my less well-travelled readers, is Chinese for hello. For language buffs Ni =hel. Hao=lo. So Hel Lo and from that we get Hello.
My overwhelming memory of being in Shanghai last year was of people wandering around in their jim jams. It is a perfectly normal thing to do here. Sometimes you would see couples walking the streets in matching jim jams. Which is sweet, as well as bonkers.
My overwhelming memory of wearing jimmies (when I was about seven) is of one's "manservant" accidentally popping out of the notoriously poorly-secured, frontal access port flap. Thank god I have yet to see this happen out here. Either Chinese PJs have no such port flap, a better designed port flap or Chinese men's "chopsticks" are too small to pop out.
I haven't seen anyone in their jimmies yet. Why? Because it's only 1 degree outside.

There's going to be a problem with this blog while I'm out here. Namely the Chinese government's firewall. What's a firewall I hear you cry? It's to do with the internet and it's quite complicated. It's a way of downloading the server in html so that anything one might actually want to do on the web (examples might be writing an amusing blog, looking at artistic and sophisticated nudes for working purposes or seeing a video of a woman falling into a fountain in a shopping mall while she texts someone) is effectively defragged (stopped) from appearing on the hard drive of your computer. As well as the screen (or monitor). In layman's terms, you can only use the internet here for boring stuff like maps.
Anyhoo the upshot is that I can only blog at work (the internet pipe comes from Taiwan instead of China so the firewall doesn't happen. So if my blog updates appear to be less culturally incisive (or racist as some of my readers have complained), it's because people at work can look over my shoulder and see what I'm writing.
Well I'm going to be here for 2 months, the food's terrible and there's nothing on TV except Chinesey stuff, so I imagine I might be updating reasonably often. If I don't then it's probably safe to assume I've been partaking of the traditional Chinese custom of drinking one or two refreshing Tsing Taos (literal translation-beers).

I'm not dead.

Been busy. Don't ask. Just accept it.
Anyhoo. I'm off to Shanghai for a couple of months on Saturday so prepare for laughs and amusing obeservations of the Chinese peoples, their ways and the hilarious antics they get up to.

I'm taking my camera too so expect wonderous pictures. Mostly of people wearing their jimmies in the street during the daytime. I shit you not. They do that.