Why not have a vote on my wonderous poll?

Go on. It'll be great.

Ahhhh look at her little face.

Her name is Xzhouxiangzxinledongzxh. She's quite old and lives in an alley that I use to get to work every morning. An alley, that I find out a full 2 months after I got here, is called Death Alley. So that's nice.

Anyway she occupies this spot because it gets the sun. They put a newborn puppy next to her a couple of days ago and she was licking it. Ahhhh very sweet.

Anyway. On an unrelated note my time out here has been partially spent in a quest to find a decent cup of coffee near to work that doesn't make one involuntarily shout "HOW MUCH!" when they tell you how much it is. I tried a new place yesterday.

It was a five minute walk away so not far but in a touristy place. I ordered the cheapest coffee on the menu. Only after she’d started making it did I read on the menu that it would take 10-12 mins to make.

Fuck a Peking duck. 

So I had to stand there hopping from foot to foot in frustration while she selected the correct jar of beans, ground the beans, poured the resulting coffee dust into a little paper funnel, placed that in the top of a thimble sized paper cup, then poured hot water, drop by agonising drop, onto the coffee dust and let it soak through and drip into the cup until the cardboard thimble was half full. By which point I was knobbing furious, and sweat was dripping down the walls. I paid…wait for it… £2.50! I walked back to work to enjoy what I thought was going to be the coffee equivalent of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling only to discover that she had spent 10-12 minutes making 2 inches of tepid dark brown water. 

Done like a fucking kipper.

I have no idea what this says

I liked it though so I took a picture of it.

What I do know is this. If it said "Come along to the Chinese Communist Party Are Poofaces Workshop. We need between 5 and 30 people.Nibbles will be served." then  two things would have happened:-
a) it wouldn't still be there for me to take a rather snazzy picture of.
and 2) the workshop would have been raided, the workshoppers arrested and the nibbles probably dashed to the floor in the inevitable scuffle.

Yes my one reader, today you are alarmed to find me exploring the dumbfounding world of totalitarian regimes. While I've been out here in Shanghai, people throughout the Middle East have been trying to throw off the yoke of totalitarian regimes and the Chinese government are worried that it will spread here. Here it's called the Jasmine Revolution and there have been tentative online attempts to organise protest here in Shanghai and also Beijing.  Censorship is increasing noticeably. For example one of the only four channels that broadcast in English out here is CNN, the American owned news network. I have been watching and whenever a report comes on that mentions protests in China, the feed is cut and the screen goes blank. This happened to a report that was about to mention the censorship in China. They censored the censorship.
There was another story that a bloke in China was chatting to his girlfriend in the States. She was banging on about something (as they often do - probably kittens or knitting) and he said "The lady doth protest too much" he repeated the same Shakesperian phrase later in the conversation (probably recognising that she was talking so much she hadn't heard him first time round) and at the second mention of the word "protest" the line was cut off. No word of a lie.
And the Chinese people I work with say they often hear people talking or a clicking on the line when they have a good old chat on the phone.
And Google are cross because they are getting fed up with Gmail being looked at all the time. This post is being posted via a server in Taiwan so I presume it won't be censored but you never know.

Anyhoo these last two posts have been a little heavy haven't they? I promise to post something superficial and irrelevant next time. Possibly with a picture of a little old dog sitting in the sun. In fact definitely.

I got this email recently.

My hotel room door. The Lost in Translation Hilton (Shanghai).

It’s from my mate Dan Izbicki who was on a business trip to Prague and it got me a’thinking. Here it is:

“So I'm alone in Prague contemplating whether to go out for a solo meal or order room service. And I figure 'Andy is a man who'd know the right decision', having no doubt faced a similar scenario on occasion. Trouble is you're probably asleep.

Anyway I took the executive decision to go out for steak and chips (they do a mean steak and chips in Prague) and they got my table booking wrong by 1 hr. At least that what the stupid Czech bird said. Personally I think they gave my table away to 2 people for the extra cash. Bastards. So now I'm stuck in some sort of solo traveller netherworld. Do I wait or give up?  Stick or twist?

Needless to say I've retired to a bar to contemplate this decision. It's the smallest bar in the world and they only serve wine (ponces) and I'm the only person in it. Apart that is from the bar maid with whom I've tried to start up a conversation but with limited success. We seemed to run out of topics once I'd complimented her on the wine.

Anyway it seemed as good a reason as any to drop you a line. Hope life is treating you well. You must be back soon? Do those Chinese fellows allow skype these days?  Haven't noticed much Brittain onlineness of late. Your blog made me chuckle today.

Guess I'll read a chapter of my book. It's about WW2. I know! A real expansion of the horizons.

Dan”

Why did it get me a ‘thinking? Well for a start it’s funny, has the word “ponces” in it, includes swearing, says my blog made him laugh and it’s always good to hear from friends when you’re 3000 miles from home. But that’s not what sparked the Brittain grey matter out of its traditional weekend shutdown and into full…you know…thinking about stuff mode. No it wasn’t. It was the mental picture of the loneliness of the long distance advertising idiot (of which I am proud to consider myself one) that Dan so wonderfully evoked in his kind email.
Speaking from my own experience, and I’m sure it’s not the same for everyone, I find something exquisitely melancholy about business travel that if you're not careful you can start to enjoy. As elaborately coiffured American songster, John "Juicy" Mellencamp so loudly crooned it, “Hurts so good.” 

Why the words "if you're not careful?" I have no one else to ask this question of but myself, so I'll...you know.... have a go at answering it. I think, it's possible to get addicted to it. It's so keenly felt. I'm not saying you don't feel other things like happiness and sadness but compared to the cold, overwhelming blankness of a life lived, albeit temporarily, in a strange land, miles away from the ones you love, amongst people it's impossible to communicate with, they seem insignificant. 
Although it's not a pleasant feeling, it is at least a big feeling. It snaps you out of the hum drum, day to day crap of existing and cruelly reminds you that you are alive. 
I know that other events evoke this too but not many. Bereavement and teenage heartbreak are ones that I can think of but the "good" thing about this excruciating loneliness is that it affects no one else. No one has to die, no one has to hurt anyone. And the best thing is, it stops instantly. You meet up with your silly friends, they tell you about some reassuringly irrelevant nonsense they've thought of and your world  is once more back on it's stupid axis.
And that is why I think it's addictive. If you think I'm wrong then actually you're wrong and no returns.


Brittain out.

Steet vendor. I wonder what he sells.

He's either selling chairs or remarkably strong handcarts.

Been a bit busy.

The twin responsibilities of work and making calories be in my body have got in the way of updating the old blogola. So apologies. I had a pizza at a really nice pizza place last night. What was it like? I'll tell you. Imagine James Bond is in Shanghai and he wants to meet a fellow spy (probably a bird, raven hair, large boobs, called Honey Blowjob or something) in a mid-priced, smart BUT discreet, pizza joint. This is where he'd go. If he was Yu he'd find the dough a bit chewy but otherwise he'd be pretty pleased with it. If he was me he'd be delighted with everything especially, you've guessed it, the price of the Tsing Tsao and he'd be trying to look at the bird's knockers without being caught.
Anyhoo. As I said, it's a bit busy at the moment so here's a few pics.

The Pudong (no really) from a bar at the top of a bloody big building.

Literally a Chinese dentist. Ha ha ha ha ha aha ha ha ha.

Two boats on the mighty Haunagpu. Some smog in the background. Some water in the foreground.

I like Chinese

Today you find me waxing lyrical about my host's plus points. Yes, they'll happily mow you down with their mopeds and yes, they'll cheerfully block a pavement by parking their car actually on it but before I go getting on my high horse let's consider the wonders of China and the Chinese peoples.
And while we're at it let's not forget that perhaps I have faults of my own. Yes, my one reader, I'm not so blinkered that I don't realise that, contrary to what every one of all my three friends would undoubtedly say, I am not perfect. Maybe I'll deal with that in a later post.  A post in which we can join hands as we set out together on an adventure, a journey if you will, to explore the Andy Brittain psyche. We'll stroll through the sunny glades of Andy Forest, bellyflop into Lake Brittain and quaff deeply from Andy B Fountain. Maybe not the last one. Unless you're a lady.
But hold fast ("hold fast!"what am I medieval all of a sudden?). Back to the Chinese peoples and their pros.
1. They throw nothing away. Everything is recycled. Shoes. Clothes. And for all I know, specs. But especially the cycles. When one breaks or goes wrong, they don't throw it away like we in the West do. They repair it. There are bicycles here that predate The Revolution (the bicycle puns just keep on coming). Nothing is wasted and you'll often see a 9 foot pile of cardboard seemingly cycling itself along the street to be recycled into more cardboard.
If you stand still too long a tiny little bent old man comes along, spits alarmingly and picks you up, puts you on the back of a 1911 tricycle (converted to an electric one by attaching the electric motor from a 1956 hairdrier and adding a battery the size of a tricycle - top speed 1.2 mph) along with other bits of old crap and cycles off somewhere to convert you into another tricycle. Sadly as they get richer, they seem to be embracing all the worst traits of a Western society so quite soon you'll be being flattened by an idiot on a shiny new bike instead of a rusty old shitheap.
2. They completely ignore Health and Safety. People take responsibility for themselves and if they die that is shrugged off as being generally good for the gene pool. Weeding out the dumb and unlucky. Luck plays a great part in Chinese culture. I mention it here but not as a plus point. It seems to hamstring them somewhat ("somewhat!" now I'm Edwardian). No one has a helmet (on their head) or drives sensibly. Indeed the roads are something of a free for all in which a long blast on the old horn is thought to render the vehicle indestructible and so can be driven completely without recourse to the, hitherto regarded as immutable, laws of physics. Specifically the parts of Newtons Laws of Motion that deal with the outcome of two bodies colliding.
And as for fireworks, every New Year the hospitals are overwhelmed by smouldering hoards of blackened revellers. I watched people planting a big box that in World War 2 could have been used to flip a Tiger onto  its back, into the middle of a six lane road and then retire a couple of inches to admire the artillery it unleashed. Cars simply drive round it. And not only was returning to an unexploded firework not frowned on, it seemed to be compulsory to pick it up and pop it in your pocket.
3. Look what they do to their dogs! Ha ha ha ha ha. When I saw this spectacularly silly display, I had to take a picture. The woman who's dog it was, also owned three other less idiotically coloured, yappy little wankers, which she proceeded to threaten me with. I was sat on some steps while these four tiny dogs yapped at me and bared their microscopically pathetic teeth at me. She went away when I laughed at them. Honestly. What did she expect? Her dog is bright pink and yellow and orange! People are NOT going to stare? Handsome white blokes are NOT going to take pictures?

Ha ha ha ha ha...wheeze...ha ha ha ha.....cough....ha haaaaaaaaaa

4. They have a refreshingly straightforward approach to the art of having a poo. They treat it as a normal bodily function that is nothing to be ashamed of. And of course they're right. I realise that I have an unusually severe case of anal retention and so I find myself envious of the way everyone just gets on with it. The loos at the office are even  designed to blast a jet of warm water at the old "rusty sherrif's badge" that I also admire and, once I'd got over the initial surprise, like. Sometimes I give it a blast even if I haven't had a poo.
5. They have a cool flag. Sweet.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm not going to go into how great the economy is because frankly it seems to be built on the backs of poor people doing things for a pittance. Also I'm no economist. If anything I'm an econopissed (for my American , and probably only, reader I  mean pissed as in drunk, not annoyed).

Brittain out.