15 Seconds of Frame

Yes, I have completed my entry for the Nokia 15 second film competition. It's sitting next to me in its jiffy bag ready to be posted. It's not great (the morning of filming, I suddenly had a better idea while cleaning my teeth, but it was too late) but it might make the finals. I just have to hope that not too many people bother to enter.

Now, off to the Post Office, then I shall return to the library and type for a while about vice in '20s Shanghai. Gambling! Prostitution! Hoorah!

Waking In Pain

Yesterday was rather unproductive, as I woke up to discover that I'd somehow managed to sleep in such a way as to pull a muscle in my shoulder. This left me barely able to move my right arm or neck without being in quite a lot of pain.
Still, I managed to get a few thousand words done on the Shanghai book.

Also, we got Buffalo Soldiers out on DVD and watched it in the evening. I recommend it to all my friends.

Today, I have managed a cunning dodge, registering my laptop on the network at my alma mater under a friend's account (which should be defunct but isn't). Once again, free net access. Yeah. Now I'm sticking it to The Man.

The "Liverpool of the East"

This is getting tiring. But I have to do it - I've now written (I like thinking of it this way) over $500 worth of the Shanghai book. Which is to say, less than half. On the other hand, this is the transcribing notes and things like that - all the bits of information that are hard to find but probably useful for an RPG (a Mongolian pony only twelve hands high can carry a 140lb rider! most young employees of foreign firms took rooms in the French Concession! Patrick givens was the first foreigner to visit Chiang Kai-shek when he arrived in Shanghai!).
I need to get this stuff done before I leave, while I still have the resources to hand. I need the books for all these bits, but I can do the made-up stuff whenever, as I'm... making it up.

I've been doing research for it, sure (thank you, Encyclopedia Cthuliana), but much of it I can just come up with whole cloth.

Wow. Blogger is great for procrastinating, isn't it?

Okay, So I Had A Better Idea

Actually, I didn't. Someone else did.
Despite news that one-day tickets for the grandstands at Shanghai are still available (I'm still mulling over whether or not that'll be worht it), Adam reminded me of the existence of the Macau Grand Prix.
It's a Formula 3 event run through the streets of the city, much like Monaco. Looking at the programme I see that they have several races over the weekend, including a motorcycle race. Bikes? On a street circuit? Are they mad?

This is the kind of insane risk that makes me want to take up bike racing, if only I knew how to drive one.

So, yes, Macau looks like a good plan even if I do go to Shanghai - it's cheap for the race tickets (though probably not for accomodation) and I've always rather fancied going to Macau anyway. In fact, due to the way British citizens can visit there and Hong Kong visa free for somethign like 90 days at a time, if I wanted to stay in China without the need to apply for a visa all the time, I could flit across the bay between Macau and HK indefinitely.

So could you... come to China, land of opportunity!
I was reading a book about Shanghai in the 20s recently. I've been reading a lot of them, actually, but this particular one had a salient sentiment: in Shanghai, the low-born and the frankly mediocre could live better than they could at home and achieve a status far higher than they could ever hope to get elsewhere. Of course, this status didn't transfer out of Shanghai, but there you were.

Sounds familiar.

Yep. Underchievers of the world, China - land of low expectations - is your oyster.

Grand Prix woes

It looks like I've missed out on my chance to go to the Chinese Grand Prix. Apparently, when the ticketing agency said "that ticket's available", what they meant was "it's not available". And because I thought they were taking my money, I (obviously) didn't simultaneously try and buy a ticket from someone else. With the result that now I don't have one.

People who don't care about motor racing, or even those who - unlike me - haven't followed Formula 1 since they were old enough to know what a car was, may not understand quite how disconsolate I am about this. This was my best chance to get to a GP ever, and a great race to go to as well. If I'm lucky, I may be able to go to the Macao GP (if they're still running it), which is a Monaco-style F3000 race.

The main thing that galls me about this is not merely that I'm now not going to the race, something I'd set my heart on months ago. It's that I know that, if I were a purchasing officer for a shoe company, with intention of watching any of the race, I could go for free.

Yikes

Belted off two articles into the aether so far. Oh, please, please let them sell.

Will probably do a Supporting Cast piece for Pyramid tonight. There's a historical figure I'm going to fictionalise for the Shanghai book. They can have a non-fictional version. Huzzah.

The Shanghai Guidebook continues to grow. A bit. I've written parts on the White Russians and the Green Gang, plus the index of locations continues to grow. I re-read Masks last night to make sure of what was what (I note they've put in the Cathay Hotel on their map, even though it was yet to be built in 1926). Lots of bits I'd forgotten, though it does convince me that the Tomes & Magic section shouldn't be too hard to compile.

Need more ideas for articles. Unfortunately, I'm rubbish.
I went up to the Chinese embassy today, but unfortunately the visa section is only open from 9 to 12, so I'll have to go again tomorrow. I mooched back home, stopping only at the National Gallery to gaze lovingly at the Canelettos, and have basically accomplished bugger-all today. Though I have sent some query emails, I don't expect a positive response to any of them.

Well, back to the word processor.
Peace out.

The Obligatory Big Brother Post

I finally worked out what Nadia's screech reminds me of -- the original Godzilla.

Fuck the Guardian

I never thought that one article could make me stop buying a newspaper. But this article just did it.

This is anti-Catholicism at its worst. Greer doesn't know much about church doctrine - that's understandable, as she's not Catholic - but you'd expect some research. Even without a huge amount of knowledge on the part of the author, the odd bit of criticism never hurt anybody. Except that this isn't criticism - it's just an attack in print. Why?

I suspect because it doesn't matter if you upset Christians. They'll only forgive you. Imagine if the article were about Islam or Judaism. It wouldn't get past the sub-editor's desk. But this is fine, apparently.

It shocks me that this level of bigotry is acceptable in today's western media.

What really hacks me off, although it's also almost comical, is the "Catholic women respond" section. This section features no Catholics. Being from South America or Ireland doesn't magically make you a Catholic. It would be like having a "Church of England men respond" section with contributions from Peter Tatchell and Lionel Blue.

Unbelievable. It's just totally one sided. It's the kind of article that you can't even be bothered to refute, as it's painfully obvious that facts and truth are never going to get through.

I suppose I shouldn't worry too much about it. It is only one article in a much-maligned paper that the vast majority of people in the world don't read. I should be heartened by the swelling numbers of the church and its successes fighting AIDS in Uganda and all that. But it does make me despair for the country in which I've grown up. Seeing shit like this printed in a national paper makes me feel powerless to accomplish anything.

Why bother trying to use your skills and talents when incompentent hacks get a platform on the basis of their names? Maybe that's why I'm leaving here.

So there we go. Maybe I'll try the Independent.
For fuck's sake.

Place-holder

I'm going back up to Beds tomorrow, so I'll post something more substantial there. Because that way it'll be on a flat fee internet connection rather than pay as you go.

In other news, my quite good plan for an article appears to have been scuppered by certain press officers not providing me with event details.

Damn it.